TODAY we publish details of how school fees at both private and public schools are rising dramatically as cash-strapped parents default.
The average fee is rising at a rate way above inflation while the income of the average household remains stagnant or in decline.
Investing in a child’s education is the number one priority of most parents. It follows that for a parent to default on the payment of school fees suggests very difficult personal financial circumstances, indeed.
The effect of this defaulting is then felt by the other parents.
The school’s fixed expenses have to be paid and so the fees go up to make up for the fee-payment shortfall.
While the growing cost of education is most dramatically illustrated by the fees of “Model C” and private schools, the rising fees of less expensive schools are also affecting less affluent parents.
Since 1994, the government has promised its people free and compulsory education and it has, to a large extent, delivered on this promise.
But there are signs that the public education system is depending increasingly on funding from parents.
Government needs to look closely at how its education budget is spent and eliminate expenses that it cannot afford such as the costly experimentation with “outcomes based education”.
In yesterday’s edition of this newspaper, columnist and UFS rector Jonathan Jansen quoted from a heartbreaking letter written by a teacher who was living in poverty despite decades of success in the classroom.
Teachers and principals must become the priorities of the education authorities and of society as a whole.
Wasteful spending must be slashed in favour of improving their pay and the status they enjoy in society.

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