Her son Ishmael is due for Grade One next year and like any clever parent, she is already hunting for a place for him.
An information officer by profession, Moyo and her lecturer husband hope their salaries together with the money they make from running an electrics shop in Harare will give them enough money to send their son to the elite school and also cover other daily expenses.
Moyo’s day is however spoilt by a notice pasted on the wall at the reception area — “Except for current siblings, places are full until 2014”.
“I thought I had missed a big chance until I enquired and they told me that tuition fees for Grades One to Seven costs US$1 600 per term above an acceptance fee of US$15 000,” Moyo said.
“Even if they had a million vacancies, where on earth were we going to get that money from?”
A snap survey done by The Standard showed that education in Zimbabwe could soon be a preserve for a few, judging from the high amounts of money being charged by many schools.
Information from the Progressive Teachers Union of Zimbabwe (PTUZ) indicates that most mission boarding schools are charging between US$350 and US$400 per term while day schools are charging between US$50 and US$150 depending on location.
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Parents with children attending schools in high-density suburbs said education was getting too expensive even for them. Some government secondary schools in the area hiked fees from US$44 last term to US$96 this term.
While efforts to get a comment from the Zimbabwe Trust Schools Association were fruitless, unionists blamed School Development Associations (SDCs) for exorbitant fees at schools, saying they were pushing the poor out of the education system.
“There is no central point where fees are regulated,” Oswald Madziva, the PTUZ national coordinator said.
“SDCs used to serve on a voluntary basis but now many of them want allowances for sitting and they get these from the fees.
“We also have information that some of these SDCs refuse monthly and sitting allowances and are actually on the schools’ payroll.”
Madziva also implicated sch-ool heads, saying some of them were working in cahoots with SDCs and getting “something”, thus completely eliminating checks and balances in the fee structuring system.
He called for far-reaching reforms in the education sector to tame “the madness.”
Sifiso Ndlovu, the Zimbabwe Teachers Association CEO said most schools including public institutions were now being run like profit-making businesses.“They want the schools to be exclusive and thus hide behind standards making it difficult for the poor to access education,” he said.
Ndlovu said government should take up its role of controlling and funding schools to take away the burden from SDCs.
