I say not. If they can’t pay school fees, block them at the gates.
Ok. I really need to explain myself.
I believe that everyone has the indiscriminate right to education. Yellow or brown, black or white, Indonesian or Salonese. Education is a basic right. It should be made accessible to everyone from all walks of life.
A country fails to provide this basic right for its people if noticeable minorities start showing up in their statistics for being unschooled, for the sole reason of not having enough funds. Money shouldn’t be a barrier that denies people from getting a basic education. The people should be provided avenues to hone their skills, and hence, become a contributor to one’s own welfare, and to the benefit of the country’s economy.
So, in a way, private schools violate this basic right to a certain extent. Schooling fees in private schools shoot up the roof, in comparison to public schools. Therefore, only the rich get the rights of passage into quality schools. Vast majorities are denied this avenue that can skyrocket their potential to the superhighway for wealth and success. That is, if we give the assumption that private schools provide better quality education that public schools in the first place.
But that, I reiterate, is an assumption.
However, private schools are not to blame if they really do provide better education. It’s willing buyer, willing seller. If a parent believes that sending his children to a private school can give them an edge that other children don’t normally get, and if that parent can afford to do it, then let the parent do it. That in itself is an exercise of that parent’s right, based on that parent’s own value judgment, isn’t it?
So, it’s not fair to point a finger at private schools.
But that’s not what I’m keen on discussing. I wanna discuss about public schools. And why it doesn’t have to wave a free ticket to education to just about anybody and everybody.
In Malaysian schools, education is dirt cheap. In the school I teach in, school fees come up to RM50.50 per year. If you include the PTA fees, that will be another RM50. If you include the purchase of the school annual yearbook, that’s another RM15. Grand total: RM115.50.
Can every parent afford to pay RM115.50 for his or her child’s education?
Hmmm… Ok. In the name of humanity, let’s assume that not everyone is that fortunate. Maybe for certain pockets of people, cash flow is worse than a stagnant drain. Maybe they really cannot afford RM115.50 per year.
Nevermind. Let’s take away the PTA fees then. The PTA’s role is to serve the disadvantaged students anyway. I’m sure they’ll understand if the underprivileged can’t pay PTA fees. That’s RM50 less.
Maybe they can’t afford the luxury of buying the school’s annual yearbook. It’s not fair to make that a compulsory purchase for everyone as a blanket policy. Ok, let’s exempt them from buying the annual yearbook. That’s RM15 less.
New grand total for the disadvantaged and underprivileged: RM50.50.
RM50.50 per year. That’s RM4.20 a month. Equivalent to 14 cents a day! I’m pretty sure that’s not too much for ask.
Here’s how it is really like, in real-time service.
We teachers, are called Pegawai Perkhidmatan Pendidikan Siswazah. In English, it means Graduate Educational Services Officer. Our main role is to educate. But in our context, we also double up as administrators. We also do things like collect fees, send them letters if they don’t pay fees, and call up their parents if they don’t pay fees. It’s our responsibility, although we don’t delight in it.
“Well, if it’s really that cheap, why don’t you pay on their behalf? It’s a charitable thing to do. It adds to the nobility of your profession”.
Yes, of course. But you see, there is a difference between those who can’t pay fees, and those who won’t.
There are certain pockets of people who really can’t pay fees. They probably come from widowed families, the single parent is uneducated, and they literally scrape by to get through each day. They send their kids to school. The kids actually try to study. They may not understand whatever is going on in class, they may never pass. But they display, at the very least, a sincere interest to try.
For these people, I don’t mind paying for their fees. Actually, I don’t have to. The school’s Badan Kebajikan (Welfare Department) takes care of such cases. If they are somehow overlooked by the Welfare Department, it is a pleasure and joy for me to help these kind of people.
But then, there is a group that won’t pay fees.
Here are their arguments:
“Education is free! Our government pays for us! Why should we pay the school?”
“I don’t have money today. I will pay tomorrow.”
“I will pay next week.”
“Salary did not come in yet”
Whose salary, theirs or their parents? Usually they didn’t even ask their parents. It’s either they never asked their parents in the first place, or their parents have given them the school fees since day one, and they have squandered it somewhere else. So they cannot ask their parents again. One phone call to their parents, and everything becomes clear.
“Expensive lah…”
Yet they are the ones who can buy cigarettes at 70 cents a smoke. 14 cents a day, that’s enough to get you through your school fees. That’s all I ask of thee, all ye pockets of citizens that work at night markets at RM50 a night and buy the trendiest handphones and bring them to school, only to get them confiscated!
“I forgot.”
“I will bring next week.”
“After the holidays, I will pay”.
“After June.”
“After July.”
It’s now one month away before school ends, and you still get nothing.
Procrastination, forgetfulness, projecting a false sense of poverty… all that I can stomach. But take a look at some of these audacious questions:
“If I don’t pay, will I get kicked out of school?”
“If I get kicked out of school, can I still sit for SPM?” (SPM is a public examination for secondary school students).
“If I don’t pay school fees, does that mean I won’t get my report card and leaving cert?”
Ok. How to deal with those kind of questions?
Will I get kicked out of school if I don’t pay fees?
Yup. If you ask me, if you don’t pay, you deserve to be kicked out of school. If it’s because you can’t, that’s one story. If you won’t, that’s a different story. And you guys are supposed to know the concept of halal and haram, don’t you? You get in a bus. Can you say you don’t pay? You eat in a coffee shop. Can you say you don’t pay? What do you call it, if you enjoy a certain service or a certain product that comes at a fee, and you refuse to pay? I believe that is called haram. So that’s what you are when you come into this classroom. Your very presence is haram.
You can be sure you won’t get my blessings in whichever exam you take. No need to come and kiss my hand and all. You do what’s right. Then God will help you.
But of course, you can’t say that. The correct answer is…
No. You cannot get expelled from school. You can only be expelled if you are absent for more than 60 days, or if you have severe disciplinary record.
If I get kicked out of school, can I still sit for my SPM?
Yes, you may. But I say, what a waste of time. You’re doing nothing even while you’re in school. You hand up blank papers in every, single exam. You bring an empty bag to school without a single book or stationery inside. Yet you are the ones who make the loudest noise when you don’t get the SPBT textbooks, or when we are late in distributing them. And when you get those textbooks, they never see the light of day, God knows where they went, and you don’t return them at the end of the year. So every year, the government has to spend more money on buying for textbooks to supply to the SPBT storerooms, those textbooks keep ending up in your hands, they keep getting lost… and you keep not wanting to pay school fees.
(*SPBT is a scheme that allows students to borrow textbooks for free.)
So, yah. You can sit for SPM. Since SPM fees are already paid for you by the government. It’s a free exam. Come if you like.
But if you ask me, I say… Go home, you blockhead. And don’t bring your firecrackers with you.
But that is not the correct answer. The correct answer should be:
Yes, you may sit for your SPM. It’s your right to sit for your SPM exam, as long as you are registered. You can do it at any age. You can do it twice in a year.
If I don’t pay school fees, will I get my report card and my leaving cert?
Well. Sure, you will get your report cards. Which I have probably bought on your behalf. Which are probably all filled with red ink. Which I spent more time filling in your marks then you spent doing your exam. I don’t know why you even want your report book. It’s a reminder of what you are, so I really don’t understand. Why do you want your report card?
And, yah… You can have your leaving cert too. Which I have spent days preparing for you. You know why? It’s because you don’t even provide me with your basic information like your Identity Card number, birth certificate number, address, etc. I had to play private investigator to dig out your personal details from the inner recesses of office files. Only to find that your details may not necessarily be true anyway. Usually, they are phoney.
So, ok, here you go… Your leaving cert. I dunno which employer would wanna look at it. I think you’ll stand a better chance at landing a job if you just say “I forgot to bring it”.
But that is not the correct answer. The correct answer should be:
Yes, of course you will still get your school leaving cert. If you do not get expelled from school before your schooling year ends, it is our responsibility to provide you with a leaving cert. And your report book as well.
And so, my friends, fellow educators, my students who are reading this, and the general public… If you ask me what we should do, when we are sipping our teh tarik while swapping stories with one another…
I say, bar them at the gate.
Sometimes, certain small things are just a matter of personal responsibility.
