This comes after the Addie received a complaint about a high school withholding school reports due to outstanding school fees.
According to Phumla Sekhonyane, spokesman for the Gauteng Department of Education, it is not the policy of government to withhold school reports because of outstanding fees.
She says the matter of outstanding school fees and the payment thereof is between the school and the parents.
“We therefore urge the parents who have outstanding fees to make arrangements for payments at the school.
Frans Styger, principal of Hoërskool Hugenote, says in the 29 years he has been teaching at the school no reports have ever been held back.
Laerskool PAM Brink’s principal Anton Jansen van Rensburg says the problem is that parents send the children, knowing they have outstanding school fees, to fetch their school reports.
“All the schools want is for the parents to make prior arrangements for payment of the outstanding school fees and no school will hold back any reports.”
At their school they give the children a brown envelope with either their report or a letter to the parent reading “you are more than welcome to come to the school to make arrangements for payment and then the school report will be handed over to you”.
At Springs Girls’ High School (SGHS) the parents received an SMS prior to today to make arrangements with the school regarding outstanding payments.
Danicha Stoffberg, principal of SGHS, says sometimes it is the children not wanting the parent to see their reports who make up stories about the school refusing to give their reports to them.
Another school who sticks to the law is WK du Plessis school.
Cobus van Eeden, the school principal, says every child receives a report and all the schools are asking for is the parents to make prior arrangements.
“We have debt collectors who deal with outstanding school fees,” he says.
The one thing these schools have in common is that they ask the children to either pay for their school books or to fetch the books at home, but every child does receive a school report.
