Klao Bell, Staff Reporter
EDUCATION has gone the way of hire purchase, with many schools accepting fee payments in monthly or weekly instalments.
But schools, not structured to be run in this manner, have suffered from cash flow problems by choosing not to sacrifice students' attendance.
The instalments accommodate parents who principals claim are too proud or too honest to accept what they deem "Government assistance" in the Ministry of Education's cost-sharing programme. It also accommodates some parents who receive money from the cost-sharing programme, but are still unable to pay their part of the money.
"Some parents are honest, they say they don't need the cost sharing, just time to pay," said Merlene Lawrence, bursar at the Merl Grove High School in Kingston. "If they come with $100 we don't turn them back, people are facing difficulty."
The school fee at that school is $8,000 and to date, fees for 20 per cent of the student population have not been paid just under three months into the new school term.
Principals claim that delinquency in paying school fees has been an ongoing problem, and payment plans are the only way to guarantee even partial returns from delinquent parents or from those who are genuinely facing financial hardship. It also prevents parents from keeping their children from attending school.
"If we insist that they pay half or quarter we won't get anything," said Headley Moore, principal of the Yallahs High School in St. Thomas. "If we don't make arrangements we don't get any money."
Mr. Moore also said that for the first three weeks in September a significant number of students did not turn up.
"We had to send letters appealing to parents to send their children and work something out with us," he explained. "Since then, 60 students have turned up."
The Ministry of Education has instructed schools to accommodate parents in this way. Minister of Education, Burchell Whiteman, in a television broadcast in 1996, stated that "...where there is difficulty in paying the full cost, an arrangement must be agreed on with the school administration."
This policy of sympathy toward parents is however adversely affecting the school coffers as stalled payment create cash flow problems forcing them to increase fund-raising efforts and cut back on teaching materials.
"We have parents paying $500 per month," said Thelma James, principal of Oberlin High School in rural St. Andrew, "but with payments like that it's going to be tough. We have bills to pay and materials to buy."
Oberlin's school fee is $7,000 for the year.
"To a large extent the school is being run on canteen money and that goes to maintenance alone," said another principal. "...We had to cut back on teaching material last year and save some of the money for this year, teachers and students have to buy their own materials."
But Edwin Thomas denied the claim that schools have to take such stringent measures, as cost projections for the school year should have been made for the previous year, ensuring that adequate money is available for the running of schools.
"It can't be that acute," Mr. Thomas said. "When schools collect fees in September, it wouldn't be just for the first term. So, if 20 per cent of the parents pay the full fee, that would be available...the school's can't be that short of money."
