BY MBONO MDLULI
MBABANE – The regulation of school fees will be put in place by the Ministry of Education and Training.
The regulations will state how the school fees should be paid and what should be done if there is a learner that is found to have no money to pay for his or her school fees. It is expected that the regulations should state the rights and responsibilities of the learner, the parent and the teacher, including the head teacher.
This was said by Minister of Education Owen Nxumalo in the House of Assembly when he responded to a question by Members of Parliament (MPs). The legislators wanted to know what the Ministry of Education and Training had to say about head teachers who wanted children to pay school fees at the beginning of the year.
The minister said school administrators should consider that the economic situation for parents is bad, hence they should not expel children on account of owed fees.
Nxumalo further mentioned that it was important for children to be allowed to have unlimited access to education, regardless of whether they had money or not. The minister clarified that his ministry did not allow parents not to pay school fees for their children, but encouraged teachers and children to agree on how the parents were supposed to pay for their children’s school fees.
The minister mentioned that there were parents who were gainfully employed. He made it clear that those were supposed to take responsibility and pay upfront for their children. He further stated that there were parents who were not employed and relied on income gained from informal businesses such as selling of handcraft products.
He said the regulation would enable to children to have unlimited access to education and protect them from being expelled anyhow for not having money to pay school fees. Nxumalo said there was a task team that was appointed by Government to transform the country’s education sector and that team was the one that was going to come up with the regulations.