Schools take advantage of Kaimenyi loophole to raise fees

Secondary schools are taking advantage of a loophole in the fees guidelines issued by former Education secretary Jacob Kaimenyi to raise charges above the recommended ceilings, piling financial burden on parents who also have to pay higher prices for books and uniforms.

Prof Kaimenyi in February last year capped annual secondary school fees at Sh9,374 for day scholars, Sh53,553 for boarding and Sh37,210 for special needs schools, in a bid to tame the haphazard increases effected by the institutions every year.

The fees guidelines, however, allowed schools to charge Form two, three and four students extra fees for ongoing infrastructure and transport projects that had already been approved.

Secondary school heads are now exploiting this leeway to issue hefty fee demands on parents and introduce new project charges.

“We have sampled fee structures from 100 schools in all 47 counties and it is apparent that head teachers are openly defying the government’s guideline,” said Musau Ndunda, the Kenya National Association of Parents secretary general.

Mr Ndunda says some of the fee structures in their possession show some schools charging students as much as Sh82,000 per year, well above the recommended amount.

The learning are separating the “actual fee” and “project costs,” making sure that the former amount is within the Sh53,553 limit but lumping other costs under the development bracket.

School fees structures seen by the Business Daily show that at State House Girls for example, parents of ongoing students are being asked to pay Sh53,554 in fees but underneath this column is an “ongoing projects” entry that carries an extra charge of Sh16,600.

Parents with students in Kiaguthu Boys High School in Murang’a County have been asked to part with approximately Sh10,000 each to apparently offset a defaulted commercial bank loan that was used to build a dormitory block.

The fees guidelines, which banned non-essential charges like teacher motivation and education improvement, seems to have left an unguarded loophole that schools are now using to squeeze cash from parents.

Mr Ndunda says his organization is preparing to face off with the government (and schools) in court over the continued “exploitation” of parents through charging of “exorbitant” fees.

“We have instructed our lawyers to compile this information with a view of filing a case in court in the coming days. We have to put a stop to this once and for all.”

New Education secreatry Fred Matiang’i last week said the government is going to look at the school fees guidelines afresh while also coming up with a final Form one selection criteria “to ensure that young people access education.”

READ: Union and parents put Kaimenyi on the spot over school fees guide

Julius Melly, the vice chairperson of the Education committee in Parliament, said the government needs to fully implement the “sufficient” laws that are in place to curb the perennial problem of arbitrary school fees increments.

As parents prepare to cough out tens of thousands of shillings in fees, their situation has been aggravated by increased costs of textbooks and school uniforms.

Retail outlets in Nairobi have raised the prices of key learning items by double digits, with traders citing the steady increase in the cost of living and of doing business in the city as the main cause.

The Kenya Publishers Association (KPA) has, for instance, raised the cost of 200 titles of State-approved textbooks by up to 10 per cent, citing higher production costs— particularly the weakened shilling.

The publishing industry lobby says that higher energy and labour costs over the past one year had also forced them to pass on the extra cost to consumers.

In September 2013 the government slapped a 16 per cent VAT levy on textbooks, making Kenya one of the few countries in the world that charges a tax on school books.

“The increment of between four and 10 per cent has been effected on about 200 books to recoup their cost of production which is spread over about three years,” said the KPA chairman David Waweru in an interview.

“Failure to implement the increment would see such books go missing from bookshelves.” School uniform retailers have also increased the cost of essential items, laying the ground for an expensive back-to-school affair for parents and guardians beginning this week.

The Business Daily visited several uniform stores in Nairobi’s CBD and found that the retailers had raised the costs of shorts, ties, sweaters and shirts by between Sh75 and Sh200 each.

A major uniform shop, with branches on River Road and Moi Avenue, had increased the price of a pair of shorts to Sh640, up from Sh565 a year ago.

The pupil is also required to wear a shirt now priced at Sh520 – up 25.3 per cent from Sh415 in January and Sh340 a year before that.

The price of a school sweater is up 10.1 per cent to Sh1,140 while a pair of socks and a tie retained their price tags of Sh255 and Sh150 respectively.

The new prices mean that a parent buying three pairs of uniform for a pupil in this school must part with Sh8,115 up from Sh7,230 at the beginning of the year, or a 12.2 per cent price hike.

This amount is exclusive of the cost of shoes as well as of sports gear required for physical training.