School fees get a cell-by date

2003-11-25 21:45

Alet Rademeyer

Pretoria - "A wonderful spring day to you. But please pay your child's outstanding school fees. If you have already done so, thank you."

Cellphone text messages (SMS) like this changed the fee payment patterns of Hoërskool Staatspresident C R Swart after the governing body appointed Gerhard Swanepoel, a financial adviser with a background in psychology, to deal with outstanding school fees.

Swanepoel said parents ignored threats to pay their children's fees because they had been "blacklisted and summonsed" too many times.

"Our approach is to take hands. We have sympathy for parents who are battling and cannot pay."

Swanepoel said the school worked out that only 27 of the 670 pupils' parents did not have cellphones. <>A generic message is sent to each parent from time to time. A few days after the messages go out, the school receives a lot of outstanding fees.

Going with the times

Yet, this is not enough and the school has to deal with about R360 000 outstanding debt every year.

Swanepoel said although 80% of parents could afford to pay, only about 65% did so. "We have to change parents' approach to payment."

Dr Johan Drotsky, principal of the school, said rising costs and reduced government assistance were forcing schools to increase their fees.

This year CR Swart fees rose by only R50 a child, said Drotsky.

His school, for instance, received R58 000 in government subsidies every year.

Water and electricity bill amounted to R12 000 a month, books and stationary cost R76 000 a year, cost of copying amounted to R78 000 a year and seven teachers had to be paid by the governing body.

- Beeld