Govt must stop this school and its N44m school fees for primary school pupils in a country with 133m in multidimensional poverty
In the last few weeks, amongst the trending news both in orthodox and social media platforms has been the unveiling of the West Africa branch of Charterhouse Group of Schools in Lagos, Nigeria. Charterhouse is one of United Kingdom’s leading independent boarding and day schools that is co-educational. The school was founded by Thomas Sutton in 1611 to provide education for boys and girls aged 13 to 18. It is one of Britain’s nine elite public schools.
Curiously, rather than being excited, most Nigerians are outraged at the cost of enrollment and tuition in the school. In the UK, Charterhouse charges full borders 44,220 British pounds. This makes it one of the most expensive schools in the UK. For their school in Lagos, however, the entrance form for the primary section which is expected to resume in September is a non-refundable N2 million for admission forms and N42 million per annum for tuition.
This almost N44 million fee for primary school pupils makes the new Charterhouse school the most expensive primary school in Nigeria, if not the world. The secondary arm is still under construction. The fees would definitely be more than that of the primary arm. Presently, another British school, Lekki British International School that provides pre-school, junior school, high school and advanced classes charges approximately N4.6million per annum for day students and about N6.8 million for boarders.
American International School in Lagos is the most expensive secondary school in Nigeria with an annual fee of N5.5million. The primary school age in Nigeria is between 6-12. This is the basic and formative education stage for all children. The state, parents and guardians have the constitutional compulsion to provide this basic education for children.
However, Nigeria has one of the highest out-of-school children standing at about 20 million. So, invariably, Nigeria needs to do more to get more of the children into school to acquire basic education. In a way therefore, it is a welcome development to have more individuals and organisations commission more schools to take in more children and provide more jobs.
However, in the case of Charterhouse British School in Lagos, most Nigerians are outraged at the prospective cost to parents just to provide their children with primary school education. Most are questioning why a British school would choose to run such an exorbitant tuition in a country that has dire economic challenges with more than 133 million living in multi-dimensional poverty. These questions are raised without prejudice to the freedom of individuals to either invest in a school or for parents to choose to pay any amount they can afford for their children’s education at any level.
The paradox is that the best West African School Certificate Examination (WASCE) results in the last 10 years in Nigeria have never come from the high-brow international schools despite their high cost and drain on the resources of parents that patronise them. Most of the best results have come from Catholic mission schools, Deeper Life schools and other moderately priced public and some other private schools.
We believe that even though parents are free to choose schools for their children, governments must protect citizens from unnecessary exploitation in the guise of tuition fees. The question is, what value can parents get from paying N42 million for primary school children? What we feel the British people want to do through the school is to tap into elite vanity of Nigerians who often do not bat an eyelid about spending money on needless luxury items.
If the government allows this imperialist pricing to go on, other schools that are already highly priced can take liberty and increase their fees, citing the benchmark set by the Charterhouse school. Even when there is freedom, there must be decency in pricing of goods and services. For a third world country that does not have a lot of institutionalised productive industries that generate a lot of money, some parents’ aspiration to send their children to that school can only deepen corruption in the country, as some political elite would want to pilfer public funds so as to fund their children’s education in a school that would seemingly be removed from Nigerian environmental reality in terms of their curriculum.
The school has indicated its intention to run a British curriculum which obviously would mean indoctrinating Nigerian children with British educational curriculum, culture and history. We believe that the global community has since shed the core vestiges of colonial past. There must be intentionally taught indigenous content in the education sector. We believe culture and tradition must be passed down through the formative period of our children’s lives for better grounding and cultural identity that empowers.
It is unconscionable to charge Nigerians almost what the school charges in British Pound sterling equivalent even when the situational variables differ remarkably. We don’t operate in the same economy. The British have aristocrats and generational industry owners with global investments. Nigeria does not have their equivalents. Nigerians that can afford to put their children in that school might just be those with their hands in the public till. To pay that much for one child at the primary level means that individual must be some billionaire. Nigeria does not have too many productive billionaires to populate the school with their primary school age children.
This British school charges is reminiscent of what some British airlines like British Airways and Virgin Atlantic have been doing in the aviation sector. Their exploitative fares were just recently brought to a halt by the entrance of Air Peace into the Lagos –London route. It is amazing that they immediately slashed their own fares from about N13-15million for business class to about N5 million after Air Peace started with N4 million.
We are surprised that there seems to be no regulatory body that is actively in charge to possibly have scrutinised the fee proposals before it became public. For some years now, the Nigerian economy has come under serious strain. The renewed vigour of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) in chasing those spraying naira at parties should equally be directed at issues like the hyped amount of the Charterhouse school with the potential for luring citizens into economic and financial crimes.
We must also point out that governments at all levels must invest in education and return the standard and allure of public schools to make private schools less attractive, and abolish imperialistic exploitation from other countries. Ironically, most of the political elite that look the other way while foreigners exploit and poach Nigerian talents to their own economies attended well-run public and cheap schools.
Most Nigerians are ready to trace those who would send their children to the Charterhouse school with a view to tracing their sources of wealth. Nigeria cannot continue to be paying for the profligacy of public servants at all levels. We feel Charterhouse, no matter what the investors say or how much the government expects to get through taxes from it, must be forced to bring down their very obscene fees for pupils whose parents might be interested in paying. For sure, no Nigerian investor would be allowed to replicate the Charterhouse experience in the United Kingdom.
