A Cape Argus investigation has found that a number of high schools across the Western Cape are flouting the law by charging desperate parents an “unlawful” deposit – in some cases up to R1 000 – to secure a place at the school the following year.
The Western Cape Education Department (WCED) will launch an investigation and has slammed the schools doing this.
Schools that charge parents deposits or demand advance fees to secure places were showing a “significant disregard of the legal framework which regulates payment of school fees”, said the department.
One parent said that when his son was accepted into Grade 8 at Livingstone High for next year, he was asked to pay a non-refundable deposit of R800 by June 1.
The parent, who has not been named to protect his son, said the department had advised parents to apply at more than one school.
When his son was also accepted at Rylands High, the man was asked to pay R2 900 “to secure your son’s place”. He was asked to pay a minimum deposit of R1 000 by August 1 and the balance by November 21.
He said he did not have the money and the school had offered him a form to apply for an exemption from paying fees.
Livingstone High said the principal would comment next week.
Rylands High principal Kay Naidoo said the deposit was refundable and that the school only kept 10 percent of it for administrative costs. “Parents who are experiencing financial difficulty need to come to the school to make payment arrangements.”
WCED spokesman Paddy Attwell said the law was clear: the SA Schools’ Act determined that schools “may not charge fees such as a registration fee, a deposit, readmission or pre-admission testing fees, or any other fees at the time of application”.
Asking for a deposit for submitting an application was clearly unlawful, and a situation should not arise where parents had to get deposits back when they applied to more than one school.
The department
“in no way condones this”, said Attwell.
An Eerste River parent said he applied to enrol his daughter at Malibu High in Blue Downs but was advised to apply elsewhere.
A letter to him said her “result in mathematics is decisive” and that “at this stage the maximum number that can be accommodated has already been enrolled”.
The parent said he was told this daughter had not made a 50 percent grade in maths.
“This school is on my doorstep and my two other daughters went to this school. Why must I now send my daughter to another school?”
While the department’s policy is that schools may not use a pupil’s academic performance to determine admission, this does not apply to schools such as Malibu, which are focus schools.
Attwell said that at focus schools – Dinaledi, STEM (science, technology, engineering and maths), or agricultural – there
were subject-specific requirements since pupils had to take certain subjects or needed a good foundation in a subject.
The school secretary said Malibu was a focus school for maths and science, so it gave preference to pupils who achieved over 60 percent in those subjects, and to those planning careers that involved those subjects.
Another parent from Ottery said Camps Bay High School told her in a letter that it couldn’t offer her foster daughter a place and first needed to accommodate children who lived in the area. She was told she had access to a host of schools in the southern suburbs.
The parent said that when she called the school before receiving the letter, there was no indication that her daughter might be declined and she was told the school was waiting for a form from the primary school.
She said she was told that when the form was received she would receive documents including payment procedure and confirmation of acceptance.
But the next day she was told her daughter had not been accepted.
She said she could only conclude that her daughter had not been accepted because she was a foster child and would therefore be exempt from paying fees.
Attwell said “feeder zones” had not been determined for public schools, but “schools may in terms of their admission policy indicate areas from which children are accepted”.
Parents could appeal to their district office to investigate and ultimately appeal to the MEC if they believed their child had been unfairly excluded from a school.
Camps Bay High principal David de Korte said he had no way of knowing the girl was in foster care.
He said their feeder area ran from Hout Bay to Woodstock but they admitted pupils who lived as far as Khayelitsha or Mitchells Plain under exceptional circumstances. “We interview them and if the child is exceptional and we can easily see that there is a plan for them to get to the school every day... then we will consider them.”
The pupil’s previous school had told him she had been absent a lot during the previous year.
He said there were a lot of good schools in areas surrounding Ottery. “We only have space for about 140 pupils next year and we’ve had to say no to 40. Every child has something special about them but we don’t have space for all of them.”
[email protected] – Cape Argus