School Auxiliary Fees

By now all students should have resumed going to school but once again the issue of high auxiliary fees has arisen.  The government has committed to ensuring that no student should be prevented from going to school due to non payment of user fees and in that regard agreed to fund that cost.  However the matter of auxiliary fees remains up in the air with many parents refusing to pay.  One of the problems is defining exactly what should be included in auxiliary fees and what is to be funded by government.  Auxiliary fees can include any of the following items, drama, arts, music, sports, lab fees, computer costs, schools challenge, festival and more recently All Together Sing.

The idea is to promote the concept of producing well rounded students with an appreciation of other aspects of society.  Now in principle this sounds like a reasonable position and in the past schools use to receive funds for these types of activities that were conducted during school hours.  For many schools today the reality is that these have become after school events which incur significant expenses.  There is a trend today of seeing schools employing professional coaches for their sports teams whereas in the past it was the responsibility of the PE teacher.  Schools have increased the number of sports in which they participate resulting in additional costs to the school.

Festival has been expanded over the last 10 years resulting in the need for schools to hire more teachers to prepare the students for the various categories.  The music programme on TVJ, All Together Sing, has also necessitated the need for more teacher time for practice, traveling to the event and for costumes.  Many schools hire additional part time teachers to help with these events who will not be paid by government.  This results in the school having to seek the financing from parents and thus the implementation of auxiliary fees.

I am not opposed to the idea of broadening the horizons of the students but in these tough times it seems to me that the school ought to budget carefully for these extracurricular activities.  Ideally the government should finance all of these activities but once again there are not enough resources.  Given the scarcity of resources, consideration should be given to limiting the number of activities in which the school will take part.  This will limit the amount to be charged for auxiliary fees and help to ensure better compliance.  In any event no student should be stopped from coming to school because they couldn’t pay.