Common Sense: Why pay Shs1.2m for a nursery-going child?

God how I dread these times! Having to wake up very early in the morning like some zombie just to beat the early morning jam only to find that despite you waking up at 5am, you are still hit with that infuriating jam all courtesy of the resumption of the school season.
How times have changed. Twenty years ago, waking up at 5am in order to get your child to school on time was unthinkable. Such absurdity would be considered criminal at the very least. Fast forward, to the dot-com era, and boy, not only do you have to wake up the poor soul in the wee hours of the morning but you also have to contend with the ridiculous school fees.

How does a nursery school charge Shs1.2m in school fees per term? What the hell are they teaching the lad? Karl Marx’s teachings? Or perhaps the reasons why the Euro zone is facing its nadir if the Greeks default on their repayments?

It must be something very important to these children’s’ future and wellbeing on this earth that justifies Shs3.6m a year (as tuition fees), for a toddler that spends exactly three hours at school. If not, then I would advocate an enquiry done by the state in a scam that is today’s school fees.

Correct me if I’m wrong, nursery school is all about getting a child to learn the basics in the way they run their lives and we are talking about learning how to share, learning the right pronunciation to words, limiting the blows they throw at perceived enemies, that sort of thing, right? One can add in that mixing putting names to animal figures, getting to know the different colours and basically having a huge ball with fellow toddlers.

Now can such a task be worth the amount one can pay for an acre of land? Moreover, the parent has to drop the child to school, pack them their bites, dress them up, pick them up and on top of that contribute a fee when the nursery school takes the young ones for a field day!

If we are not careful, we as a society are heading for a “financial melt-down” courtesy of school fees. We have school entities that market themselves as “international schools” where school fees are actually paid in dollars with a year’s school fees for a primary school going for $60,000 (Shs120m).

Someone please tell me, what constitutes an international school? Tell me exactly what such a school offers that has such an advantage over the other school schools in terms of education curriculum? Do they teach a child how to fly an helicopter at the age of seven? Or perhaps the horse riding lessons are one of hall marks that make that institution “international” in nature. Could one of the tutors be Barack Obama?
Let’s look at our society; look around you from the current heads of major brands and companies in Uganda, were they beneficiaries of international schools or nurseries that teach Latin as a subject? Look at our leadership structure; were the likes of President Museveni, Baryamureba and the MD of Stanbic Bank, all products of these international schools?

And here is what irks me about Ugandans; you will find a parent borrowing like hell just to make sure their child ends up in Tutri International School in Kenya. You will find a doctor working round the clock to have their child go into Hungry Caterpillars Nursery School. Isn’t such behaviour in a microcosm, a reflection of us as a society? We simply feel inadequate as a people hence the need to buy a Mercedes Benz despite earning Shs500, 000 a month!

As parents we simply need to put a stop to this madness. These ridiculous school fees exist simply because of us. We as a society are the oxygen that encourages all sorts of kindergartens and schools charging whatever they want. It’s our docile nature that has led education to be dangerously positioned as a “profitable business”.

Don’t get me wrong, we all love to take our children to the best schools. And I’m not advocating for all of us to pack our children off to Kinawataka Nursery School where fees are a cool Shs60,000 per term, no! But not noticing as a parent that charging school fees for a three-year-old to the region of Shs4m a year is very wrong. It is like not realising that getting your 17-year-old child an Audi car for their birthday is simply insane.

We run the danger of being aloof as parents, having a warped up idea of right and wrong and passing on that thinking to our young ones who will throw a tantrum for taking them on a holiday to Mweya Lodge: “Mum, we don’t want to see Mweya, we want to go to Disneyworld in Florida.” And the parent will go: “OK, Sweetie whatever you want dear.” Sigh.

rkalumba@ug.nationmedia.com