Private school fees and unbridled deregulation

Staff Writer | Wednesday February 19, 2014 16:25

About two years ago, the Member of Parliament for Francistown South, Wynter Mmolotsi, successfully tabled a motion calling on the government - in consultation with stakeholders - to develop a mechanism for regulation of fees of private educational institutions.

Although most Cabinet Ministers opposed the motion, it was eventually adopted. Sadly, the adoption of the motion only meant that it joined the many others that passed by Parliament that are gathering dust and cobwebs somewhere at Government Enclave where there is sufficiently little human activity for spiders to extrude and weave silk from their spinnerets. This is so because in Botswana, the Executive decides when to implement motions adopted by Parliament, even whether or not to do so. Some of the motions passed by this August House have hosted spiders and their webs for donkey years. Accordingly, in the thinking of certain cynical denizens of Government Enclave, there is nothing wrong with Mmolotsi’s motion being consigned to the same fate.

It matters little that it is an instrument by which inflation due to unregulated private school fees might have been contained. Because private schools determine their own fees, the majority of Batswana - especially those at the bottom of the rung - must suffer for the sins of the elite. The irony of it is that even as they suffer, most members of the Great Unwashed never know what hit them because they live at the back of beyond of rural Botswana where private education is unheard of.

Since the government introduced cost recovery measures in public schools, it has been proven that many of the parents cannot afford to buy even school uniforms for their children or to meet the government half way. It is a terrible state of affairs when a few people’s indulgences must affect the lives of the masses. And there is no hiding behind the view that Botswana has a free market system because only a few are players while the rest are its victims.

Some of the owners of the private schools are established scoundrels who masquerade as investors who lose not one moment to take advantage of financial deregulation to export their profits. Of course, their most enabling environment is the ever-decaying public education system from which growing numbers of parents and their children are taking flight, even when they can ill afford the fare.

                                              Today’s thought

 

“Inflation is as violent as a mugger, as frightening as an armed robber and as deadly as a hit man.”

 

 

 

                                                                 - Ronald Reagan