Schools opening needs compassion, preparation

THE second term of the school year starts tomorrow and while schools and most parents are well prepared there are some extra challenges, mostly financial, that must be addressed.

The first is the minority of schools which are trying to make parents pay all fees and levies in foreign currency, or at least a high percentage of fees, or are converting to ZiG at the rate black market dealers sell US dollars rather than the rate banks sell foreign currency, averaged out to the interbank rate.

As has been made totally clear by both the Government and the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe, this is illegal. While schools were given the right to set fees in US dollars when inflation rates were unacceptably high, they have always been obliged to accept payment at the interbank exchange rate on the date of payment. The choice of currency is an absolute choice of the parents, not the school.

In addition, parents have the choice of how they pay; cash, online or debit card through a point-of-sale machine. We hope parents have been using the two electronic options, in whatever currency they choose, so they were not carrying large sums of banknotes around, and get the additional advantage of a proof of payment from their bank, just in case there is some problem with the school receipt.

Equally importantly, a school with all its fees in the bank can look with some equanimity at a robbery. There is very little to steal. The past robberies of schools at school fees time should, we hope, have galvanised heads and bursars to get any cash fees promptly deposited, and even better to have organised parents insisting on paying cash to pay into the school account at a branch of the school’s bank.

There will, inevitably, be some parents who miscalculated and are not yet ready to pay some or, in extreme cases, any of the fees.

Public schools are forbidden to send the children of these parents home, but they can demand that parents come to the school and make out a payment plan and if nothing else works, can take legal action against the parents.

Parents caught in some sort of financial trap, such as the result of a death in close family or some other emergency, should not hang back, but should be prepared to lay all their cards on the table at the school so that the school at least knows what is going on.

However, the major El Nino drought this year will mean there will be a lot of parents who simply have no money. Some of these are already covered by BEAM, the Government fee assistance scheme, but others who would normally pay from the proceeds of their crops simply do not have surplus crops to sell.

In the initial statements when President Mnangagwa declared the national state of disaster over the drought, it was made clear that a chunk of the rough equivalent of US$2 billion that would be required to cope with the drought was for education expenses.

In fact, while the cost of the food relief is the largest item in the expected expenditure, it still makes up less than half what the Government expects to spend.

Over US$1 billion is expected to meet other shortfalls, including the school fees and other educational needs of the children of many farmers and others hit hard by the drought.

We assume that this means the BEAM programme will have to be extended, and as the initial calls on BEAM funds come from the schools, that means heads are going to have to update lists.

Schools in the past have said that delays in BEAM payments from Treasury have caused problems in inflationary times, as the schools lose value on what they are owed, but the introduction of the ZiG and the largely very stable exchange rates seen in the last four weeks mean this will be a lot less of a problem.

But there is now need for the authorities to find out, from the school heads via their ministry, just how many children will need BEAM and then organise the emergency additions to what has already been budgeted.

Although Zimbabwe has a goal of free primary education in the public system, we are not there yet. But the BEAM programme provides most of the benefits and also includes secondary schools so the cost is probably close to just a free primary system.

We have argued before that BEAM should not just be all or nothing, that is full fees or no fees. We think that the scheme could be stretched a lot further by including a middle group whose parents will need to pay partial fees.

Already BEAM is paying for around a third of schoolchildren, and the fraction is certain to rise from this term as more farmers’ children are included, but there must be a significant group of parents who can pay something but not everything, hence the suggestion that more flexibility is included.

As part of the programme to overcome the effects of the drought, steps have been taken to provide a daily hot meal for around 3 million children this term, the bulk of those attending public schools. This is to ensure that children can learn, rather than be fighting the pangs of hunger and inadequate diet, and to make sure that children will come to school since they will get a meal.

It is an imaginative response. There were some school feeding schemes but these have now been extended quite a lot. Both urban and rural children will benefit.

The free school lunch is entrenched in several countries for vulnerable families and the educational benefit of such schemes has been measured. The results and cost benefit are dramatic enough to make the cost almost trivial.

It can be thought of as a sound investment, as well as a response to a drought disaster.