More schools turning to debt collectors

Star survey reveals bleak future for parents as fees jump by 8%

N INCREASING number of high-fee independent schools are resorting to debt collectors to recover unpaid schools fees as parents struggle to keep up with increasing fees.

A snap survey by The Star on what school fees will be next year shows that the situation is not getting any better.

For example, letter addressed to the parents of pupils from De Le Salle Holly Cross College, an independent school in Linden, shows that school fees will increase by 8 percent from next year.

Parents with children

AGrade R will pay R36 555 and those whose children will be in Grade 12 R55 635.

“Teachers’ salary increases will be a little higher than CPI (consumer price index) and we expect municipal charges to be about 18 percent higher than this year,” the school said.

At Redhill School, an independent school in Sandton, Grade 12 school fees will jump to R92 607 next year from R82 865.

Parents with children in Grade 1 will pay R64 975 next year from the current R59 068.

Independent Schools Association of Southern Africa’s (Isasa) director for operations and membership John Lobban said teacher salaries and high electricity bills were the major driving forces behind school fee increases.

He said that as much as parents were prepared to make sacrifices for their children’s education, they were facing “more and more pressure” and the number of parents in arrears was on the increase.

“Schools try to negotiate with parents to find a solution. They try to be reasonable and accommodating. The last resort is a legal route where debt collectors are brought in,” Lobban said.

Isasa’s outgoing executive director, Dr Jane Hofmeyer, said there was a marked difference in fee payments at low-fee and highfee independent schools.

“In low-fee schools parents pay because they know the school will collapse if they don’t pay. In high-fee schools, (the portion of) outstanding fees is larger than it’s been previously. Many more schools have resorted to using (debt collectors),” she said.

Hofmeyer said that, unlike at public schools which could not prevent children from attending even if they had fees outstanding, independent schools could, as a last resort, ask parents to remove their children from school.

National chief executive of the Governing Body Foundation Tim Gordon said there had been a dramatic increase in water and lights costs over the past three years. In addition to these service costs and teachers salaries, Gordon said the maintenance of aging school buildings was increasingly becoming another financial burden for schools.

Mumtaz Moola, a Joburg mother-of-three, said she and her husband saved every month for school and tuition fees so that they were able to pay the fees upfront and qualify for a discount. She said their oldest daughter had already graduated, the second oldest was in his fourth-year at Wits University