AN Educationist and Proprietor of Highpoint International Nursery, Primary and Secondary School, Minna, Niger State, Honourable Usman Gimba has described parents as very critical stakeholders in the education sector in the country, particularly, in the day to-day running of private schools.
He said whenever this critical stakeholders fulfilled their obligations in terms of prompt payment of their wards’ school fees in their respective schools , that proprietors of such schools make some reasonable revenues to run the schools efficiently.
Honourable Gimba, stated further that many school proprietors in the country are at the mercies of parents, who sometimes withdraw their children from private schools because they could no longer afford to pay the school fees.
“At Highpoint International Schools , Minna, this has always been the trend. There have been situations whereby parents criminally withdraw their children or wards from your school after having enjoyed certain privileges of being allowed to put the children in school based on undertaken to pay when condition improves for them,” he said.
“Since I started running a private school, which is about 10years ago, whether there is a recession or not, things have not been easy at all; school proprietors suffer in terms of the running costs and provisions of adequate infrastructures for the schools; ‘you are on your own .”
“And in view of this, it makes it critical for school proprietors to borrow money from the bank. And when you succeed in borrowing money, you end up paying with high interest rates,” he stressed.
Honnourable Gimba then appealed to the government to come to the aid of private schools owners by way of giving them grants, stressing that “it will go a long way to keep the labour market active in terms of making more employment opportunities available.”