Times Of Swaziland: SECOND TERM SCHOOL FEES

SECOND TERM SCHOOL FEES
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The Editor on 05/06/2020 09:27:00


Sir,
I am a parent of one of the pupils at a private school. I would like to express
my disenchantment and unhappiness regarding the school’s demands that we
(parents) pay school fees for the second term because the pupils are learning.
This is far from the truth. The main issue here is that the teachers in private
schools do not get income because of the COVID-19 advent. Their salaries are not
paid by the government and some may not have an unemployment insurance.
Develop
The only way out was to then develop a strategy to pretend to be teaching the
pupils so that some money can be squeezed out of the parents, some of which are
also not getting an income because they are in the same predicament.
Honestly speaking, how much work is performed by the teachers when the pupils
are at home. The bulk of the work has been transferred to the parents who have
to tutor the children during the home schooling.
Some of the parents have to return from work with work stresses and still do the
work of the teachers who now want to be paid.
It is upsetting that the government does not want to intervene in this matter
yet they are the ones who registered the school as meeting all government policy
requirements, hence they are obligated to monitor its operations.
Meeting
There is a lot that does not seem right at these schools. There has never been a
teachers-parents meeting to trash-out issues regarding running of the school.
Recently, a WhatsApp page was activated as a means to communicate between
teachers and parents. When parents began voicing out their grievances and
frustration regarding how this new teaching method was being implemented the
group administrators decided to bar or block parents from raising any queries
with the school through this platform.
What boggles the mind is that the school has not laid a clear plan on how the
home schooling must be conducted regarding; obtaining data bundles by parents
for online training; computers or smartphones to enable transfer of information
from school to pupils; Children from rural areas must obviously be fetched back
due to network connection issues there and non-availability of persons to assist
them with their schoolwork. It seems the parents are expected to take the brunt
of all these things and further pay full school fees. This is clearly not
acceptable or just.
Perhaps it is time we parents ought to have a re-look at the benefits of sending
our children to expensive private schools as external results (grade 7) show
that they are not different from public schools when it comes to quality.
Something that raises the question why we must pay exorbitant school fees for
our children in these schools.
Concerned Parent