Schools illegally hiking fees

Dear editor,We parents are tired of schools that increase fees each year without consulting other stakeholders like parents and the ministry concerned.

Monday, July 28, 2008

Dear editor,
We parents are tired of schools that increase fees each year without consulting other stakeholders like parents and the ministry concerned.

Unfortunately, the two partners keep quite and complain underground. It is wrong for a school to increase school fees when its services and general performance remain poor.

There are schools (I do not need to mention them) that have hiked fees to 150.000 FRS per term, meaning that parents have to pay 450.000 FRS every year.

When you add an estimated 150.000 FRS that are used the relative up keep of a child, the total is as big as 600.000 FRS a year.

This is quite a lot of money for Rwandans to manage and worse still, the money spent is not reflected in the quality of the school performance.

This is therefore a kind of cheating that the government must scrutinize. If I can give you a simple example, a child of primary three- four in such schools, cannot fill correctly, a multiplication table. So what kind of education are they offering if they do not give the basics?

It is wrong for parents to sit and only pay money blindly, as the so-called private schools continue to do us great disservice.

KABAGARI