Former Model C schools are braced for a flood of applications for fee exemptions from cash-strapped parents after above-inflation fee increases.
A snap survey of 15 state schools found average fee hikes of 8.3%, more than double the 3.6% inflation rate.
Increases included:
• 12.2% at Parktown Boys’ High in Johannesburg;
• 9.95% at Pietersburg High School in Limpopo;
• 8.9% at King Edward VII School in Johannesburg;
• 8.75% at Pretoria Girls’ High; and
• 8.7% at Pretoria Boys’ High.
In contrast, the average fee increase at private schools surveyed was 7%.
The Federation of Governing Bodies of South African Schools (Fedsas) estimates that government schools granted about R3.5bn in fee exemptions in 2019.
Fedsas CEO Paul Colditz said two-thirds of its 2,033 member schools that charged fees were losing 22% of income on average either through fee exemptions or nonpayment.
“A larger percentage of middle-class families who normally would not have qualified for exemption now do qualify either because the wife or husband has lost their job,” he said.
Anthea Cereseto, CEO of the Governing Body Foundation, said fee increases that outpaced inflation were directly linked to the growing number of applications for fee exemptions. “With the online admissions policy in Gauteng, schools do not know who is going to come to the school and whether they are able to pay or not.”
Cereseto said governing bodies at some traditional fee-paying schools were under pressure from parents to scrap fees.
“These are middle-income people who have jobs and live in townhouses in the suburbs who believe a school should be free,” she said.
Parents qualify for a fee exemption if the fees are more than 10% of both parents’ combined annual salary. More than 121,000 pupils in just three provinces — the Western Cape, the Northern Cape and Mpumalanga — were granted exemptions last year, according to figures supplied to the Sunday Times.
These are middle-income people who have jobs and live in townhouses in the suburbs who believe a school should be free
— Anthea Cereseto, CEO of the Governing Body Foundation
One of the schools hardest hit by fee exemptions is Pietersburg High in Limpopo, which has budgeted R4.7m for exemptions this year. The school, which has a budget of R36m, granted R4.6m in exemptions to 260 of its 1,225 pupils in 2019.
Principal Willie Schoeman said a further 45 parents who had not applied for fee exemptions in 2019 owed R1.1m in fees. The school has recovered only R3.3m of the R8.8m owed by parents since 2015.
“The education department is supposed to pay us compensation for granting full or partial fee exemptions but we haven’t received a cent since I’ve been here,” he said.
In a letter to parents, Wynberg Boys’ High in Cape Town said if everyone entitled to a fee exemption requested it, “the school would no longer be in a position to offer the opportunities, experiences and facilities which go to make it a world-class school”.
Colditz said he did not blame public schools for setting above-inflation fee increases as the costs of municipal services such as water and electricity were high.
“If a school has a hostel, the municipal bill for the month could be R200,000 to R300,000,” he said, while compensation from provincial education departments for fee exemptions was “minimal”. “We’ve had fee exemptions of R1m being granted and the school gets R30,000 in compensation,” he said.
Four education departments — in the Western Cape, Northern Cape, Free State and Mpumalanga — paid out a total of R81.4m in compensation to 838 schools in 2018 despite the schools granting exemptions of several hundred million rands.
Western Cape education department spokesperson Bronagh Hammond said more parents were battling to pay fees. “This puts a massive financial strain on fee-paying schools, which rely on fees to sustain their daily running costs.”
The Eastern Cape said it had not yet approved the payment of compensation to schools for fee exemptions last year, and Limpopo education spokesperson Sam Makondo said it had not paid “because schools didn’t comply with the criteria for exemption” — a claim the schools deny.
Lebogang Montjane, executive director of the 844-member Independent Schools Association of Southern Africa (Isasa), said fee increases this year were lower than in the recent past. “Previously you would see double-digit increases.”
Between 2017 and 2019, the number of pupils attending Isasa member schools that charged fees ranging from R20,000 to more than R100,000 dropped from 107,064 to 104,585.
Goolam Ballim, chief economist at Standard Bank, said a preliminary analysis of household finances showed a rise in defaulting parents from private and public schools.
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