Cape Town - Escalating electricity costs, property prices and salaries are driving up the costs of schooling, putting the squeeze on the budgets of parents.
The increases are affecting public as well as independent schools, neither immune to the effects of rapidly rising costs.
Paul Colditz, chief executive of the Federation of Governing Bodies of South African Schools (Fedsas), said that, on average, fees would have increased by about 10 percent a year since 2013.
This year, fees at public schools will range between about R300 and R27 000, although some schools charge more.
Colditz said there were a number of reasons for these increases.
“One of the reasons is an increase in municipal costs at an average of 18 percent per year over the past five years.”
In a study conducted by Fedsas in 2013, a precursor to a report set to be published later this year, the federation looked into the average annual fees charged by public schools in the country.
The organisation said 561 schools took part in the study, giving a large sample of the country’s education offerings.
On average, parents in the Western Cape spent around R6 100 to send their children to pre-primary schools, R6 681 for primary schools and R9 233 for secondary schools.
They were spending more than the national average of R5 715 for pre-primary, R6 052 for primary and R8 875 for secondary schools, the study concluded.
Tim Gordon, the chief executive of the Governing Body Foundation, said the salaries of teachers appointed by governing bodies was another major cost.
He said if the government increased the salaries of its teachers by 8 percent, for example, governing bodies had to do the same for the teachers they employed, who were doing the same job.
Herschel Girls’ School was forced to increase its school fees to break even this year, said the school’s council on its website.
Fees for the senior and preparatory schools rose by 9.5 percent, while the foundation phase’s costs went up by 12.5 percent “to account for the true cost of running those grades”.
Chairman Alexandra Watson wrote that escalating property prices, staff wages and the incorporation of school activities such as camps into the annual fee were behind the increase.
“Staffing costs alone account for 70.6 percent of our total operating costs,” wrote Watson.
She emphasised the importance of maintaining a low pupil-to-teacher ratio.
The school charged around R46 000 a year for pupils starting in Grade 1 to R82 000 for pupils in high school.
Western Cape Education Department spokesman Paddy Attwell said there were 887 no-fee schools in the province.
He said parents could qualify for exemption from paying fees if the fees were more than 10 percent of their combined annual income.
They could also apply for partial exemption, based on their annual income.
According to Old Mutual, the combined cost of education, which includes public primary and high school and a three-year university qualification, for a child starting Grade R this year, was expected to be R1 082 000.
This increases to R2 431 000 for private education.
Cape Argus