If you are a parent, I totally sympathise with you during this time. Back to school season is never a time to look forward to, especially for parents taking children to school for their First Term. The January drought leaves so many casualties that the last thing I am sure a parent won’t want to hear is the hustle of school fees. Unfortunately, life always has other plans and the children have to be in school, that’s it. No excuses. Bambi the parents toil to make sure their kids are in school in time and ready for a new term. It’s the joy of any parent to drop their kids at school and be told that their kid has fulfilled all their requirements. That joy is bound to be cut short these days with a circular bluntly putting out a new “fees structure”. They smuggle new fees into the so called “new fees structure”. The figures are unreal and not explained. After this nonsense, you can’t even trace a single administrator on the school campus. You find all these headmasters hiding in their offices. Hopeless!
I understand that schools are now business enterprises but this insanity should stop. Nursery school children have for long been paying more fees than students at university. Such madness! Has the alphabet changed? Are your swings hi-tech? What magic is a school performing on a child for them to demand such crazy fees? So, cant a child go to a decent nursery school these days? Primary school is impossible. I am told schools increase fees every single year. There is always some damn reason they give. Mbu the school sweaters might need more buttons so BAAAM, a fees hike just like that. It is normal to find a malnourished child in a posh school. Pure rubbish! A message to school heads and proprietors is that if you are going to shoot your fees through the roof, do it morally. There is no uniform in the world that goes for 500k.This is broad daylight theft.
For secondary schools, we might need to fast because it has become something else. The famous Development fees come to mind. Parents pay for what their children might never see. It is no secret that you will find three generations of students paying for one school block that never gets finished. These Development Fees are the stupidest invention ever. What does a child have to do with some staff residential quotas being built? Don’t those teachers earn? They should be able to sort themselves out. I remember how we brought rolls of toilet paper every beginning of term that we never go to use. Mbu for teachers. Bambi you had to improvise every time you went to the toilet. Only God knows where the countless brooms we brought every term went.
Man these schools will ask a parent for money for paint, cement, iron sheets and you wonder if your child is going to school to become a builder in future. The great Gayaza High School is asking Senior Ones for “Entrance Fee” of Shs365,000. Wait what??? 365,000/=? Are the children going to school or attending the Jazz Safari? This madness is why our education system is doomed. Schools ripping off parents should style up. This economy is tight kabisa.
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