The Regulations relating to the Exemption of Parents from Payment of School Fees in Public Schools (Government Notice R.1052 in Government Gazette 29311 of 18 October 2006) as amended (‘the Regulations”) afford the parents of learners at public fee-paying schools the opportunity to apply for a full or partial exemption from the payment of school fees.
Unfortunately, the heavy reliance fee-paying public schools have on school fees to provide quality education, coupled with how the Regulations operate, results in schools being pitted against parents applying for exemptions.
Moreover, the Regulations are poorly drafted as seen in the case Head of Department Western Cape Education Department and Others v S (1209/2016) [2017] ZASCA 187. In this case, the Supreme Court of Appeal had to use a creative and unintended interpretation of conditional exemptions to fairly deal with the situation of separated parents, where one parent is not cooperating in the exemption application process.
Fee-paying public schools are provided with the school land, buildings and basic infrastructure by the government. Furthermore, the main contribution of the Department of Education is the payment of teachers’ salaries, as well as a sum of money, in terms of norms and standards allocations, which does not cover all the basic costs of running a public school. Any fee-paying school that wishes to keep teacher-to-learner ratios down, which is vital for quality education, must employ extra teachers out of school fee funds. School fees also play an integral role in covering many basic operational costs of the school, not to mention any efforts to give quality education.
Therefore, the amount of school fees collected by a school directly affects the quality of education that the school can provide. The Supreme Court of Appeal recognised this fact in the case of Fish Hoek Primary School v G W (642/2008) [2009] ZASCA 144; 2010 (2) SA 141 (SCA), when it held a non-custodian parent who had not admitted a child to a public school liable for school fees and stated (at 14):
“Were the school not to have the right to recover school fees from the non-custodian parent in those circumstances, it will either have to shoulder that loss or mulct other parents with additional charges. In either event it would be acting to the detriment of other learners. By including a further category of persons to those ordinarily contemplated by the word parent, it is plain that the legislature cast the net as widely as it could to afford the school and in turn the learner the maximum possible protection. To interpret the word restrictively as the high court did can hardly be reconciled with the paramountcy that must be afforded to the best interests of the child principle.”
Unfortunately, many well-intentioned social or humanitarian NGOs in this country acting for the rights of parents, have failed to comprehend this fact, that protecting parents from the payment of school fees comes at the cost of the education of the general body of learners of a public school.
This was well illustrated in the case ofCentre for Applied Legal Studies and Others v Hunt Road Secondary School and Others (10091/2006) [2007] ZAKZHC 6 (15 June 2007). In this case, the school was challenged for non-compliance with the South African Schools Act 84 of 1996 (“SASA”) and the Regulations relating to the legal enforcement of the collection of public-school fees (Section 41 of SASA). The school admitted that it had taken judgment and enforced emoluments attachment order (the so-called garnishee orders) without properly complying with the SASA and the Regulations. Therefore, the school consented to an order interdicting them from enforcing their school fee judgments against the parents and affording all these parents a chance to apply for fee exemptions in terms of the Regulations. However, justified this order may have been, the effect on the school and the general body of learners was severe. The result was the school losing one subject and three teachers funded out of school fee income.
Among the many challenges that the Regulation present to schools, the two main ones are:
- Calculation of the fee exemption is done on a very generous formula comparing the parents’ income to the specific school fees for the year (Regulation 6); and
- Schools are not fully compensated by the provincial Departments of Education but rather receive a very small sum relative to the actual fee exemption paid a year in arrears (Regulation 170A of the National Norms and Standards for School Funding).
The result of the fee exemption formula is that:
- Any form of an increase in the number of parents qualifying for exemptions can severally compromise a school’s ability to provide quality education.
- The more parents that qualify for exemptions means the schools have to increase their school fees, which in turn means more parents qualify for exemptions, increasing the pool of qualifying parents and decreasing income.
- Parents who are earning well above the national salary median qualify for fee exemptions when this should be limited to those in poverty or financial difficulties.
Some provincial Departments of Education even fail to pay the nominal fee exemption compensation, claiming a lack of funds.
The result of this poorly thought out exemption system is that some fee-paying schools and their governing bodies are being put into the unfair position of trying to protect the quality of education they provide their learners by discouraging exemptions.
In the past, the Governing Body Foundation has lobbied the national Department of Basic Education to at least place a cap on the maximum income a parent could have when applying for an exemption. Unfortunately, the DoE did not heed these calls.
We call upon the national Department of Basic Education to seriously reconsider its fee exemption system, this is compromising many public schools that are providing quality public schooling that is such an important part of the future sustainability and viability of this country.