Johannesburg - A number of schools considered to serve affluent communities want to be declared no-fee schools, Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga has revealed.
Motshekga said some of the schools categorised as quintiles 4 and 5 were under constant fiscal pressure and had asked provincial education departments to re-classify them as no-fee schools.
Only schools categorised as quintiles 1, 2 and 3 were no-fee, meaning they offered free primary education to learners. The majority of schools in these categories are in rural and township communities. They receive all their funds from the government, calculated at R1 466 a learner this year.
Quintiles 4 and 5 were allowed to charge fees and, in turn, received considerably smaller amounts of funding.
Quintile 4 schools received R735 for each learner, while quintile 5 schools were given just R254 a learner.
Poor payment of fees by parents was what hampered some of these schools, research has indicated.
While the government paid teachers’ salaries, schools used funds in their coffers for daily necessities. Some hired additional teachers.
Motshekga, replying to written parliamentary questions, said the limitation of funds made it difficult for provincial authorities to grant “affluent” schools their wish to be re-classified as lower quintile and declared no-fee.
“Some provinces (Gauteng and the Western Cape) have, however, to a limited degree, and from their existing funding, offered a choice to selected schools in quintiles 4 and 5 to be voluntarily declared no-fee schools.
“In the current fiscal environment, the proposed voluntary reclassification of quintile 4 and 5 schools as no-fee will, in the absence of securing additional funding, be difficult to implement nationally.”
A school survey released in February revealed that fee-charging schools barely received all fees from parents. Parents who were financially struggling also had an option to apply for fee exemptions.
The TPN 2020 School Fee Payment Monitor revealed that fee payments were not at 100% even before Covid19. In January 2020, schools received 61.5% of the due monthly fees, it said. By August, they could only collect 45.9%. The report said parents prioritised mortgages, rent, car finance, store cards and loans over school fees.
The government has known for more than a decade that fee-charging schools faced cash problems.
“A study in 2009 has revealed that there are a noteworthy number of quintile 4 and 5 school principals who are interested in their school becoming no-fee schools,” Motshekga said.
“This confirms the reality of a group of schools that is not regarded to be poor enough to attract the higher level of public funding, but on the other hand, is not rich enough to fill the gap with sufficient fee revenue.
“Inappropriate quintile classification may be a contributing factor to this situation.
“These schools are under constant fiscal pressure, since they have all the financial and administrative obligations of other schools (no-fee as well as fee-paying) but are not able to attract the necessary level of funding,” Motshekga added.
The Star