A parent from Roosevelt High School has laid a complaint with the Department of Education after her 13-year-old son was held in the school’s financial office all day.
On 18 January, the mother whose identity is withheld to protect the child’s identity said that she received a call from the school and was asked not to send her child to school due to R2 000 not being paid. “I explained to her that my son had received a bursary to the value of R5 000 but the woman I spoke to would not understand. She just repeated that I should keep my son at home until I paid the outstanding amount. I explained that I work during the day and that there was no one to watch him at home but she responded that she would call my husband,”she said.
The woman explained that the school’s financial manager went ahead and contacted her husband at work requesting him to come to the school with documents proving that he was not the biological father of the Grade 8 pupil.”I decided to phone the Department of Education and find out if they could ask me not to send my child to school and I was told that the school could not do that. But that night when I arrived home, my son told me that he did not have homework and when I inquired as to why, he told me how he was kept in the office all day,” she said.
According to the mother, her son was called out of the assembly line in front of the other pupils and marched to the office where he was kept all day without a lunch break. “I asked him why didn’t he ask the school to call me. That is when my son told me that the school’s financial manager told him that she will not call his parents and that we must call her,” the woman lamented. She pointed out that her son was victimised just because she was unable to pay the outstanding amount and that when her son was taken to the office he was taken with another pupil.
“This is probably not the first time that the school does this and it really bothers me that this how they treat our children in our absence,” she added.
Acting spokesperson for the Gauteng Department of Education Oupa Bodibe said that it was not departmental policy to deny pupils access to schooling or exclude them from any academic activities on the basis that parents failed to pay school fees.
“Officials from the department have met with the school principal, deputy principal and the parent on 22 January, to discuss the matter. The principal apologised to the parent and will further investigate the matter. The parent was then advised to meet with the school’s Governing Body in order to apply for school fees exemption,” Bodibe explained.
Questions were sent by email to Roosevelt High School but no response has been forthcoming.
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