Taiwo Hassan 
Many private schools in the country are currently struggling to stay afloat over alarming huge debts running into billions of naira, fuelled by the multifaceted macro-economic challenges.
Investigations have shown that many parents in the private school system have shunned their wards’ school fees payments over hardship; forcing pupils to miss ongoing exams as they were sent back home.
An investigation of private schools conducted by New Telegraph correspondent in Lagos and Ogun states respectively show that some pupils were not allowed to write and participate in the ongoing examinations because they were yet to pay the complete school fees.
Specifically, many private schools lamented that the huge debts are taking tolls in smooth operation of their schools. New Telegraph learnt that 30 per cent of pupils may have been denied participation in the ongoing examination in Lagos and Ogun states respectively over non-payment of school fees by parents due to current hardship in the country.
In particular, the New Telegraph correspondent was reliably informed by some owners of private schools that since post COVID-19, they have experienced a myriad of changes, including shortage of quality teachers to teach key subjects.
The private school owners appealed to government for bailout as many parents were no longer paying fees of their wards regularly. The founder/proprietor of Crossville School, Ikosi, Lagos, Mr Shola Balogun, opined: “Over bloated debt is really affecting us in the private schools in Nigeria currently.
The truth is the private schools now are just struggling to survive. “Specifically, many private schools have been at the mercies of God since the end of COVID-19, because the end of COVID-19 changed a lot of things for private schools in Nigeria, whereby testedhand-teachers had to take up another jobs, because COVID-19 opened their eyes to a lot of things.”
Another school owner added, “The advent of economic crisis brought more blows to private schools in a situation whereby parents that have their wards in these schools can no longer cope and what you see is that they are now paying in installments.
In most cases, by the end of the term, the payments would not have met the necessary school fees, so they would still owe huge amount of money. Power issue is of great concern to one of the school owners. He complained about the new tariff paid by Band A users. He said, “In our community now, we are in Band A.
This is seriously affecting the school because one; expenses of the schools are so much and huge, they pay to government, they pay salaries to teachers, they pay their non-teaching staff and to local government and other community payments, land royalties, even electricity.
“We were spending like N15,000 before on electricity before now, but immediately they introduced the Band A metering, we are now paying like N40,000 on electricity consumption for a month, and that is because they are even rationing it.
“So if we are to use the light fully, maybe, we will put all our revenue on electricity payment then, because that means we will be paying more. But now, for Primary session alone, we are paying like N40,000 and another N40,000 for Secondary session, that is N80,000 in just one month!?”
