School fee hike could impact on education delivery

The city hall parking area in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe's second largest urban centre, is usually bustling when schools reopen as boarders wait to be picked up by school shuttles - now it looks deserted, the direct result of a 150 to 500 percent hike in fees in missionary and private schools. "My parents say they still have to raise the school fees," said Fanyana Ngwenya, 17, high a school student at a missionary boarding school, 120 kilometres north of Bulawayo, who was unable to join his classmates when his school reopened on Tuesday. "Times are hard - I just have to wait." Fanyana's father, Ngwenya, told IRIN that when schools closed for the holidays, he had expected that the fees, which were Zim $3 million (US $37) in 2005, would not exceed Zim $6 million ($74) in the new year. Zimbabwe has been experiencing runaway price increases since 2000, causing living standards to plummet as salaries failed to match the rate of inflation. "I was shocked a week before schools reopened to receive a notice from the school, saying the fees had been increased to Zim $15 million ($189)," said Ngwenya, a school teacher who earns a little more than US $40 a month. "He [Fanyana] also needs groceries, transport and pocket money. If I can't raise anything this week, we will have to transfer him to a local day school." The Consumer Council of Zimbabwe (CCZ), a watchdog body, expressed concern at the increases, saying they were unaffordable and would negatively impact on education delivery. "We are now faced with a situation where parents are forced to either transfer their children from some schools, opting for those that are cheaper, or completely withdrawing them from school," said the CCZ Information and Research Centre administrator, Trust Masarirambi. "At the end of the day, it is our education system that is suffering because we will have many dropouts," he predicted. Munetsi Wakatama, principal of a local government school, said his school had been flooded by parents wanting to enroll their children since Tuesday. "Most of them are transferring from boarding schools," he said. "I have had to turn many away - I have no vacancies." Another said he had stuck a notice on the gate to advise parents that his school was full. The public education system stumbled after government stopped subsidising students in 1990s and many parents shunned government-owned schools because of their low pass rates. In the face of an inflation rate that topped 585 percent in December 2005, most missionary and private schools have asserted that the fee increases were justified, but the government has accused them of defying its directive on 7 January 2006 of a maximum 150 percent rise. Stephen Mahere, permanent secretary in the ministry of education, sport and culture, urged schools seeking to raise fees to obtain permission from the ministry. That was not a viable option, according to Mehluli Mpofu, principal of a local private school. "There is too much bureaucracy in the government, and that would mean prices of basic commodities increase and students starve while we wait for the government to approve an application." "Education in the country is quickly becoming a preserve of the elite, much to the detriment of the majority," said a disgruntled parent, Marvis Saruchera, who has had to withdraw her daughter from the privately owned Girls College in Bulawayo after the fees went up from US $189 to $510 per term. Social commentators have warned that all the gains made in education since independence from Britain in 1980 risked being lost. "Most parents will end up choosing not to send the girl child to school and concentrate on educating the boy child," said Gordon Moyo, the leader of Bulawayo Dialogue, a pressure group involved in the public debate of national issues. The Progressive Teachers Union of Zimbabwe has called on the government to convene an urgent meeting to resolve the crisis.