EDUCATION officers in the Oshana region say some private schools have been lying about the number of previously disadvantaged or marginalised children they enrolled in order to claim a larger subsidy from government.
An official at the planning division of the Oshana regional education office, Simataa Simasiku, said some of the 10 private schools that government is funding in the region are not being honest about the number of orphans and vulnerable children (OVC) they had enrolled.
“They claim to have more OVC pupils to draw more subsidies from government. But upon inspection, we often find that the number of pupils they have is less than what is on their subsidy forms,” Simasiku said.
He said this was because government provided the grants based on the number of OVCs accommodated at each private school.
According to the education ministry’s policy, every private school is expected to enrol at least 10% of pupils from previously disadvantaged backgrounds free of charge, to qualify for the government subsidy.
The 10% criteria took effect in 2009 as part of government’s undertaking to allocate funds to eligible private schools, based on equity and poverty considerations.
Simasiku could, however, not provide a breakdown of how much government spends on school subsidies per semester in the region.
Education minister Katrina Hanse-Himarwa recently wrote to private schools receiving funding from government, saying her office was reviewing the grants to those schools with the aim to reduce or terminate subsidy support.
Private schools were given three months, up to 31 October 2017, to make submissions and representations to the minister on why the subsidy should not be reduced or terminated.
“Each private school should make its representation and lodge it with the minister before 31 October,” Hanse-Himarwa said in the letter dated 8 August.
When The Namibian spoke to some private schools yesterday, a few said they were in the dark about government’s latest move, but said they would be unable to cope without government funding, with some even suggesting that they would have to let go of the OVCs.
The Cabatana Private School at Oshakati said the withdrawal of government support would not only be felt at school, but household level as well.
“It will have an impact on the pockets of the parents as well,” said the human resources manager at the school, Selma Ndjukuma.
She added that despite their school enrolling 70 OVCs, out of 700 pupils, government has not been paying the subsidy on time.
“We have not received any government subsidy for this year. We usually receive the money every school semester,” she said.
Oshikoto education director Lameck Kafidi yesterday said the schools in his region were still not aware of the minister’s letter as it was still to be formally communicated to them by yesterday.
“It is not that government will stop funding them, we just want to make sure that the law is applied when it comes to funding considerations. They should show why they must continue receiving government funding,” he stated.
Schools in other regions have also expressed alarm at the move. “We depend on government subsidies to pay our staff salaries. As it is, we are already failing to pay our teachers competitive salaries,” said the administrator of Otjiwarongo Christian School, Karen Christina Marais.
The school has 150 pupils, and about 15 of them are pupils from previously disadvantaged backgrounds.
Marais explained that should government terminate the aid, they will have to let some of their teachers go, and subsequently reduce their pupil intake as well.
Marais also predicted that if government funding is cut, many cash-strapped families would be forced to enrol their children in already overcrowded public schools.
She, however, claimed that she was not sure how much money her school gets from government.
