Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe has signed into law the Education Act Amendment Bill giving the state powers to fix fees at private schools, in a development education experts say could see standards falling at the schools that are the only sources of a reliable education for young Zimbabweans.
Education Minister Aeneas Chigwedere on Wednesday told independent news service ZimOnline that Mugabe, who must give his assent to all Bills before they can become effective law, signed the Bill on Monday.
Chigwedere — who two years ago forced several privately run schools to close and threatened to jail the administrators for refusing to lower fees until he was ordered by the High Court to leave the schools alone — immediately threatened to use the new law to “deal heavily” with privately owned and church-run schools he claimed were overcharging on fees.
“The Education [Act Amendment] Bill is now law. The president assented to it on Monday,” said Chigwedere. “We are going to deal heavily with all those schools that are charging exorbitant fees. We are aware that there are some schools already charging Z$300-million a term, some Z$250-million, others Z$200-million a term. This is outrageous and unacceptable.”
The more than 500 non-government-owned schools that are run by either private entrepreneurs or church organisations are the best-equipped and best-run schools in Zimbabwe as the country’s once highly regarded public schools crumble after years of underfunding and mismanagement.
Children of senior officials of the government and ruling Zanu-PF party who are not studying in rich foreign countries learn at the non-government-owned schools, where the children of most relatively well-off citizens also learn.
But the government accuses the schools of taking advantage of their good reputation to extort money from parents by charging exorbitant fees and levies that it says are mostly used to fund lavish lifestyles for school executives.
Authorities at the schools deny the charge, saying the high fees are necessary to maintain standards and retain experienced and highly qualified teachers by paying them higher salaries so they do not leave for better-paying jobs abroad.
Under the new law, all schools — whether state owned or not — are required to seek approval from the secretary of education first before hiking fees. The law also sets stringent conditions under which school authorities may be allowed to increase fees or levies.
For example, under the new law, fee hikes should not exceed “the percentage increase in the cost of living from the beginning to the end of the preceding term as indicated by the consumer price index published by the Central Statistics Office”.
It was not possible to get comment on the matter from the Association of Trust Schools, which represents privately owned schools, or the Association of Church Education Secretaries, which represents church-owned schools.
But the two organisations have in the past opposed the new school fees law, saying it did not make sense to set conditions arbitrarily under which fees could be hiked when cost structures of schools vary depending on location and type of facilities at each institution. — ZimOnline