Several school authorities at Du-Port Road, Paynesville, have expressed frustration in the form parents and self-supported students are responding to registration and tuition payment since the inception of the new academic year.
“Our challenges are manifold. To be precise, parents and independent students are finding it hard to pay tuition for their kinds. We have 180 students at present in school,” Kingdom Christian Academy and Preparatory School’s Principal, Haratio J. Weah, said, regretting the economic difficulty the nation faces.“Some of the students are yet to register, parents brought them and appealed for them to be in school while they are looking for registration fees and tuition,” he added.
The situation is alarming, and causing many children to be out of school this year. Worldwide, the outbreak of Covid-19 destabilized every country’s economy, leaving Liberia’s tepid one in ruin.
The presence of the huge numbers of United Nations Mission in Liberia (UNMIL), and non-governmental organizations in former President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf’s administration, gave employment opportunities to several Liberians who addressed their families’ needs. Since the withdrawal of UNMIL and several NGOs, however, the economy has been struggling to recover. It is now strongly impaired by the pandemic.
At present, several Liberians are unemployed and cannot afford to pay their children’s tuition this academic year, leaving school authorities wondering whether parents of those students who are yet to register their children while they in class will meet the requirements. Some parents have lost hope and soliloquize while sitting and walking. This also derived from the increased in tuition by private school authorities with no corresponding improvement in facilities.
“The Ministry of Education’s restriction is on public schools, leaving private schools to have their way in the increment of tuition and fees,” Johnson Chea, a father of four students, said, expressing frustration.
Bishop Matthew Norwood, Kingdom Builders International, Zion Praise Academy and Kingdom Harvest high schools, and so on, are among several schools in Paynesville decrying low student enrollment this semester.
According to the principal of Kingdom Builders, registration process is tardy and discouraging since classes resume. To avoid empty classes and to raise funds to pay teachers, the schools’ authorities designed a strategy with parents and independent students.
“We encouraged parents to come to the school and meet us for their children to start attending classes before the registration process. We get into agreement on how to pay their children’s school fees,” several high school principals said in a unified tone, showing deep compassion about the financial challenges parents face this year in paying their children’s fees.
Some schools are demanding that parents buy the school’s uniform from them, a situation inflaming the financial difficulty they face. The Ministry of Education has outruled this, and Kingdom Harvest is one of the schools which adheres to this ruling prohibiting schools from selling uniform to students or parents.
“We do not allow parents to buy uniform from the school; parents buy the uniform from outside,” Haratio said.