Issue guidelines on private schools
Some days ago, I read in the papers that the government has proposed to control the fees structure of private schools. I appreciate that the government is getting concerned by a situation where private schools may exploit the students and or the parents or both. While on the face of it the idea looks attractive and fair, you see the complications in it’s implementation when you analysed it.
Private school owners are investors, so they are entitled to a return on their investment in a liberalised economy. Second, students are not forced to join private schools. It is by choice of their able parents that they end up in private schools.
Therefore, my advice would be:
Let government enhance its capacity to monitor the performance of the private schools.
The government should have benchmarks of what a private school should first fulfil before granting it a licence. Let the benchmarks be reasonable and achievable. These benchmarks may differ between rural and urban schools, and even between regions.
Let each school provide the cost of maintaining a student per year, and the government should analyse the costs and relate them to what private schools are charging. That would give the government a chance to know whether the private school is over charging students.
The government should waive income tax on education institution and let some taxes, if not all other taxes such as VAT, Withholding Tax be waived.
Government schools should be improved both in terms of infrastructure and other service delivery, including getting qualified teachers, so that the competition for good students is not a monopoly of private schools or schools that are not under UCE.
If a qualified teacher goes to teach in a private school, they should still be considered as a teacher and should, therefore, not be fired. Teaching should be considered as a service regardless as to whether the school is private or public.
As an incentive to service delivery, teachers who have degrees should have their salaries enhanced in recognition of their added qualifications.
Manzi Tumubweinee,
[email protected]
