Reduction in school fees

The advent of the worldwide Covid-19 pandemic and statutorily mandated lockdown has wreaked havoc across the country and resulted in disastrous financial consequences for everyone, not least the parents of schoolchildren.

Many parents have not been able to work or operate their businesses or alternatively, if they are currently working have been forced to take salary cuts. This situation may well continue for many months to come. However, notwithstanding this, we remain liable to pay full school fees irrespective of the fact that our children are not in fact attending school at the King David premises.

We certainly appreciate the time and effort from the teachers that has gone into providing on-line Zoom lessons and uploading of work onto the Microsoft Teams platform. However, the reality remains that the school cannot possibly replicate the quantity and quality of teaching and the utilisation of materials that would ordinarily occur during the school day.

The lockdown has adversely impacted almost all sectors across the board with the president even ordering ministers to take a 30% salary reduction. Accordingly, King David cannot simply be immune to shouldering and bearing some of the loss in solidarity with the parents, especially due to the fact that parents have had to incur additional costs for home-schooling purposes, such as purchasing toners, paper and in some cases additional electronic devices, including printers as well as the costs for increased data usage in order to enable their children to participate in home-schooling.

Whilst the schools are providing on-line lessons and teachers should be remunerated for this accordingly, there are numerous areas where the school is saving money such as the food costs for the nursery school, printing costs, electricity and Wi-fi costs and cleaning costs to name a few. In addition there are various projects and initiatives which the school will not be able to proceed with this year and for which they have budgeted.

Expecting the parents to pay full school fees for the full range of services that their children are not receiving combined with additional costs which parents are incurring to support home-schooling in circumstances where many parents are not receiving an income or are receiving a reduced income, is neither equitable nor sustainable. In light of this, it is incumbent upon King David to urgently re-evaluate its cost structures and current savings in order to pass on these cost-savings to the fee-paying parents by granting a reduction in monthly school fees. 

Parents Of Kind David    Contact the author of the petition