Covid-19: Two Most Shocking Ways Private Schools Punish Students For Parents Inability To Pay School Fees

Eniola Adeniyi

Students are at the receiving end of increasingly shocking ways private schools – secondary and primary – punish them for the inability of their parents to pay school fees.

The checks by societynow.ng have thrown up two of the most disingenuous ways devised by the private schools concerned – including the ones owned by religious bodies.

Sources confirmed that the prevalent one as schools resume in the face of the fight against Covid-19 is keeping students with outstanding fees in their old classes irrespective of the level of brilliance while their colleagues get automatic promotion to the next classes as ordered by the government.

The shutdown of schools by the Federal and state governments ate into the last days of the second term and took up all of the third term forcing the government to order automatic promotions for all students in a major step to align with the school calendar for the year 2020.

‘’But some of the private school owners are denying students with outstanding fees this automatic promotion, forcing them to stay in the same class with their newly promoted juniors’’ societynow.ng learned.

Societynow.ng gathered by not refusing the students attendance at schools but denying them promotions to the next classes, the school owners are using them as a psychological pressure tool to force the parents to pay up.

‘’But they are doing great damage to the emotional balance of the children in the bid to make profit, I dare say telling the parents to keep their children away is better’’ a source pointed out.

Insiders disclosed that allowing the affected students to attend school is a ploy by the management to keep them on its bill.

The added information available to societynow.ng revealed another punishment meted out students with outstanding fees in some private schools, especially primary, is to keep them in the library or empty classes.

‘’They are not allowed to learn new things with their colleagues but kept in empty classes or library to study old notes if they desire.’’ Societynow.ng learned.

Insiders disclosed that ‘’the tragic thing’’ about this development is that the parents are charged normal fees for the period the students did not learn anything new because it is factored into their bills as part of outstanding bills.