Schools have been forced to slash teachers’ salaries to make up for the shortfall, and in fee-paying public schools, teachers and other auxiliary staff have alsobeen retrenched and had pay cuts.
Most of Naisa’s membership comprises middle to low-fee schools. “High-fee schools may have reserves to carry them for an extended period of time, but most parents are middle-class parents and salaried parents, who don’t have reserves. “We’ve also seen the situation where parents have withheld their payments, despite the fact they are able to pay because they incorrectly argue, ‘my child is not receiving tuition therefore I don’t have to pay’… Parents who have had their salaries cut, lost their income, their business, their jobs, obviously they are entitled in terms of the school fee exemption regulations, to apply.
SGBs employed around 150 000 people, a third of whom are teachers. “The rest are administrative staff, cleaners, bus and taxi drivers, ground staff, etc. A lot of those people have lost their jobs and they are still losing their jobs. It’s a disaster.” “Parents need to understand they chose that school but look, if parents lose their jobs, there’s nothing they can do. So we have to be sympathetic to that. But you can’t pay your teachers on compassion.”
“It is not feasible to provide any form of blanket fee discounting. We understand the economic hardship faced by some of our parents and have attempted to ensure that they get as much assistance as possible to continue their children’s access to quality education.” Savo Ceprnich, spokesperson for the Deutsche Internationale Schule Johannesburg, said about 15% of parents could not pay or were receiving a Covid-19 reduction for school fees.