Zimpapers Logo

parents who default in paying fees instead of turning away pupils are doing the right thing. Parents must pay fees for their children to keep the education system functioning normally. The child should not be disturbed by the failure by his or her parents to pay fees in time.

To force parents to honour their dues, schools have started auctioning property belonging to the defaulters. Among the properties being auctioned are irrigation equipment, wheelbarrows and scorch carts.
In the past, schools turned away pupils who failed to pay fees and levies, but with the High Court judgment early this year, a new strategy will have to be used in dealing with defaulters.
The Bulawayo High Court ruled that parents undertake to pay all fees for their children when they bring them to school and failure to do so should result in legal proceedings being instituted against them.

The court ruled that school fees payment obligation was a contract entered into between a parent and the school concerned and not a pupil.
The said contract can either be express or implied. The parent undertakes to pay all fees, which the institution levies against the student from time to time. The court also made it clear that it was improper to use pupils as pawns to enforce payment by either turning them away or withholding examination results because pupils did not have contracts with the schools.

Punishing students for failure to pay school fees resulted in them suffering from inferiority complex. The High Court was correct and this has always been the position of the Government that no child must be expelled from school for failure to pay school fees.
For sometime, now, pupils continued to be shut out of school premises, forced to do manual work and have their school results withheld in order to force parents to pay outstanding fees.
Yes, schools are entitled to their fees, hence the move now by some schools to auction properties of fees defaulters. The grabbing of properties is not being done arbitrarily. Parents are given letters notifying them of their indebtedness and the need to pay up.

If they fail, that is when legal procedures are commenced for the courts to give an order to attach the properties.
Parents should now understand that the responsibility for failure to pay school fees is simply being taken from the child to the parents and parents must realise that quality education will be compromised unless they contribute

Some parents are known to resist payment of school fees even if their children are expelled or excluded from lessons.
They should now be aware that this arrogance won’t be tolerated as they would now face legal action and lose their properties.
In the 1980s there were no cases of children being expelled from school. The Government had a policy of universal access to free education.

But the onset of the Economic Structural Adjustment programme saw the Government moving away from free education to highly subsidised education. This saw some pupils either expelled or dropping out of school because their parents would have failed to pay. To cushion poor and vulnerable children, the Government also introduced the Beam programme under which parents or guardians could apply for the State to pay fees for their children.

If parents don’t apply for State assistance the assumption is that they can pay on their own.
No child must be denied education because of the status of their parents. Courts will now deal with defaulting parents. With the economic sanctions imposed on Zimbabwe by the West, the

Government simply cannot afford to give free or almost free schooling to every child in Zimbabwe.
Even with education getting the largest single slice of State income in the Budget, the money allocated is too little. This year the Ministry of Education, Sport, Arts and Culture got US$707 325 000. The Ministry of Higher and Tertiary Education got US$296 171 000.
Still this falls far short. In the early 1980s, when the Government oversaw a tremendous expansion in education, it was made clear that parents would have to help. And they did.

Rural parents built new classrooms, often using an organised “labour” levy while urban parents more usually contributed cash levies.
The Government helped the poorest communities more than those that were better off, which meant in practice that the former group A schools were pretty much on their own, the former group A schools received some help and the rural schools did a little better than urban schools.

Colonial education for the minority gave a basic primary education to most, so they could at least serve the colonial masters and reserved secondary education for a very few. At independence, the colonial policy was reversed, at some cost to parents as the budget was stretched over many more children. The parents of those days did not begrudge the extra money they had to pay.

We therefore urge the parents of today, to do likewise and pay for their children’s education. School authorities should also engage parents over unpaid school fees through school development committees. These committees should know that their purpose is to make sure that there is effective engagement between the parents and the school authorities. If that fails, the last resort is legal action.