Students return to physical classrooms today amid social and economic uncertainties trailing the second wave of the coronavirus pandemic. While many parents face the challenge of seeking for funds to pay their children’s school fees, the schools also require bank credit to make their schools ready to deliver quality education to students. This is especially in view of what could be described as a dry spell for the sector last year that could see revenue being at an all-time low.
Schools are resuming at a time when parents and school owners are still reeling from the negative impact of the pandemic on their wallets. Some Nigerian households and businesses are hurting having taken significant hits from the lockdowns in 2020, although designed to help contain the spread of the virus.
When the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) published a COVID-19 impact report in August 2020 it showed that 51.30 percent of Nigerian households, who obtained financial loans since the lockdown in mid-March, used it to purchase food.
Over 67 percent of households reported that their total income decreased, compared to the same period of the previous year (2019), and this decrease was evident across the three main sources of income (wages, agriculture, and non-farm enterprise). The report further showed 51.90 percent of respondents were worried about their ability to repay the loans they had taken during the coronavirus lockdown.
This means that many parents will struggle to pay their wards schools fees. When the school fees are not paid, schools will be unable to provide the educational services for which children assemble in the classroom, because the learning materials will not be purchased and members of staff won’t be paid.
A school owner who spoke to BusinessDay said parents tend to have a sense of entitlement. They want their children to start receiving lessons even when they have not paid up required fees.
“We are in the services business and the bulk of our expenses go to paying our staff; academic and non-academic,” said, the proprietor whose school is along the Lekki axis. “We are spending more on online learning platforms because we foresee this to remain since some parents are unwilling to send their children to physical classrooms at this point.”
Getting funds to pay school fees is a challenge for many parents, and the NBS report buttressed this by noting many households with both new and existing loans were concerned about repayment, with more than 70 percent of households reporting that they are either very worried or somewhat worried about being able to repay their loans. This is going to be compounded with the payment of schools fees that will be due as students resume.
“My husband’s medical practice has slowed down because of low patronage. People are scared of coming to the hospital. Our family’s income has taken a serious hit and we have sold some of our investments to raise the N4.5million required to send our children back to school,” Funmi Obiadazie, a mother of three said.
In previous years, about this period of the year when schools resume, banks rollout credit facilities to help both parents and schools spread the cost of students returning to school over a period of say three months. This facility was usually available to salaried parents.
Although some parents who spoke to BusinessDay explained the challenges they have had with meeting up with paying the school fees of their wards banks have not advertised their usual go-back-to-school credit facilities this year.
Even though many public schools are nominally free or cheaper to attend, many parents have lost confidence in the public school system because of the low quality of facilities available in these schools. This has forced many parents to seek education for their wards in the relatively more expensive private school system.
