Are Namibian private schools regulated?

Private schools are established as per Article 20 of the Constitution of the Republic of Namibia. The article gives the right to any person to open and operate a private school and to finance such school from his or her own resources. The same article requires that such schools must first be registered with relevant authorities, and the prescriptions as to how the registration must take place are contained in Part 6, Section (75) of the Basic Education Act, Act No 3 of 2020 (Act). Private schools are private in terms of ownership, management, and control, and they share, however, a common objective with public schools, which is to provide education to Namibian children. There are a number of private schools providing education in Namibia. They are located in towns, villages, and on farms across the country. About 50 131 learners were enrolled in 251 private schools in 2022. Private schools are and will continue to be part of the educational landscape in Namibia. They attract parents who enrol their children and pay fees as set by the schools. Schools use the funds to finance school programmes, including teachers' salaries. Some of the schools heavily rely on the contributions, while others augment the contributions with injections from other sources. The Namibian national curriculum is implemented in some private schools, while others opt to offer foreign curricula or a combination of both. The blending of the curriculum is informed by the schools' needs to respond to the varied interests and demands of their parents and children's future academic aspirations.

Private schools are required to fully adhere to the terms and conditions of their registration. In other words, they must implement and teach the curriculum they have been registered for. In fairness to all, there are private schools that operate officially because they have been registered, issued with relevant registration certificates, and abide by their registration conditions. However, a disturbance is the existence of some private schools that, though officially registered, implement curricular programmes they have not been registered for. Similarly, there are private schools that have not been registered at all and are therefore operating illegally without any official registration status.

Motives

The overriding reason for establishing private schools is to help educate Namibian children, and many registered private schools have continued to do exactly that. The section below attempts to dwell further on the possible motives for establishing private schools.

Some private schools are owned by churches as extensions of their services to the communities they serve. Some churches believe that the spiritual foundation is paramount if children are to be moulded into law-abiding citizens with strong God-fearing characters, hence the establishment of faith-based private schools. Churches would channel some sort of investment and financing into the development and operation of such schools. Church-linked private schools are mainly located on church-owned premises. The majority of them offer the national curriculum. Another group of private school owners have individual financial gains as their chief motive for establishing them. They would establish private schools and operate them in the absence of the most basic facilities, materials, and resources. They would have very little finances to properly run and operate the schools and their operational activities. This category of owners believes that facilities and materials are secondary and would be acquired through the profits made from parental contributions over the life span of the schools. Some do not have permanent premises of their own and would move from one location to another. Others would establish and stabilise themselves successfully so that they would become appealing to parents. A number of these types of schools' existences do not last for long. There is a third category of private schools, whose owners believe in education not only as a service to the community but also as a private good that can make good business sense. In other words, they attach to education economic return values, which would satisfy societal developmental needs on the one hand, while optimising the provision thereof to generate maximum private capital on the other. The provision of the education service ultimately becomes an education enterprise that is managed and run on a profitable basis. This category of owners has the requisite financial backing, appropriate facilities, and sufficient materials, including secured and reliable sources with great resource-generating capacities. The financial background from which this type of private school is born and the economic environment within which they exist and operate not only provide a conducive environment for learning but also inject the added advantage of exposing learners and teachers to the most current and advanced technologies in teaching. In general, the perception that education provided by such schools is of a high standard is reinforced through the visible materials and facilities available to learners, teachers, and the community in their surroundings. Some schools in this category offer the national curriculum only, while others offer both the national and foreign curricula.

The final category of private education providers are the private part-time tuition centres, which are owned by individuals and, at times, by groups of individuals. These centres provide part-time learning support programmes to learners who want to improve their grades, including their overall points attained in the Namibia Senior Secondary Curriculum Ordinary (NSSCO) or Namibia Senior Secondary Curriculum Advance Subsidiary (NSSCAS). Learners find themselves having to register at these centres because they may not have met the subject performance requirements to proceed to the NSSCAS level or may have fallen short of the required overall entry points and/or specific subject admission grades to register for a chosen field of study at institutions of higher learning. Some of these centres are officially registered, issued with registration certificates, and cater to the curriculum as specified in the certificates. From my observations, a number of the centres have timetables that cover teaching periods from morning until late afternoon. What is important to mention here is that learners enrolled at these centres must and are required to formally register with formally approved examination centres, unless the private tuition centres also serve as examination centres themselves. In such cases, the centres would facilitate examination registration. Parents and learners must do due diligence regarding the point above. If not careful, money may be spent on learners attending private part-time tuition centres while they are not registered for examinations. They may then be barred from writing examinations. It is very important that parents confirm the official registration statuses of part-time tuition centres and the conditions of registration to avoid any disappointments.

Authority

All private schools offering preprimary, primary, and secondary education, including part-time tuition centres, irrespective of whether the curriculum followed is Namibian or non-Namibian, must be registered with the Ministry of Education, Arts, and Culture, as per the Constitution and Act. Any school or centre established without being registered is operating illegally. Equally, registered centres and schools offering curricular programmes for which they have not registered are in contravention of their registration conditions.

Finally, processes, systems, procedures, and the roles of institutions, including measures, whether remedial or punitive, are well articulated in the Act. It is incumbent upon both the ministry and the owners, or prospective owners, of private schools and tuition centres to strictly act in compliance.