Education is parents’ responsibility

A LOT has been made of the government’s free education policy. Most of it positive.
One can easily argue that the state’s unburdening of the cost of sending children to school has many pluses.
Yet, we must remind ourselves that the responsibility should ultimately rest on the shoulders of parents.
In spite of a state guarantee that school fees from primary to tertiary level will be met, at least in part, we implore parents and guardians not to put all their eggs in the one basket when it comes to the welfare of their children or wards.
The majority of school fee paying parents will point to the rising cost of education as a situation that is fast becoming untenable for them. That is undeniable because school fees have increased exponentially over the last quarter of a century that even government schools annually require a significantly higher contribution from parents to support their operating costs.
In the post-Independence era, specifically the decade following 1975, the amount of money students need to pay for an education in public schools was almost a token amount. There was a time when parents were required to pay as little as K40 for an entire primary school year. And paying K80 for a term in an academic school year at a government run high school was not unheard of.
In rural communities across the country parents are still paying small amounts as befits their earning potential.
However, once those students reach the secondary level, costs rise dramatically. It is not uncommon for high schools to ask parents to pay the schools extra expenses in the form of project fees. The government has made it a concrete policy to boost education by making it free and accessible for the majority.
This is commendable and welcome. However, parents must still play a key role in education as is their moral and familial obligation. Following on this issue, The National has received many calls from around the nation in the form of correspondence, emails and over the telephone regarding the schools still seeing it necessary to charge fees of one kind or another.
It is clear that for whatever reason in 2012 the education system has not been completely embraced by the promised funding. Some schools are charging as high as 50% of tuition fees and claiming them to be project fees.
What are project fees, you might wonder?
These, in our view, are monies required by schools to enhance and augment their government funding for the curriculum. The reality of state subsidised or fully funded education is that it does not cover the entirety of a syllabus. There are always bound to be short-falls no matter how much effort is put into spreading the money on a national, provincial and district level; hence the need for fees outside the stipulated government allocation.
But, in saying this, the amounts charged by schools should, theoretically for this academic year anyway, be significantly less than previous years. Up to this point the government and the Education Department have not made it known how free education is to be structured. We do not know for instance whether the money made available for this purpose will be released through the respective provincial governments, or given directly to schools.
Some provinces have adopted free education-style policies for years. Enga is a notable example. The Enga provincial government has pursued the education of its human resource as a high priority and has paid tuition fees for its student population for the last 15 years.
As such, in theory, no public school in Enga should be charging fees of any kind.
The previous Somare government at one stage released a K200 million school subsidy which worked by parents initially paying the normal school fee and then receiving a rebate or reimbursement at the end of the year.
The success or failure of that programme has not been properly documented but anecdotal evidence shows that a good number of parents never got their reimbursements. 
School boards everywhere have a duty to run with the government’s policy and it is hoped that they do so in a transparent and accountable manner. 
Parents, as principle stakeholders, must be kept informed on how funds received by a school are to be used and where other fees they pay on top go to.
It does not take much to get parents on side because they will support any initiative that is beneficial to their children.