5.2% Is the Country's Inflation. Yours Is Probably Higher.

The Government Statistician's September figure came out on 7 October: inflation rose to 5.2%, from 5.0% in August. Parents will hear that number on the radio, and when Term 2 fees come up, a good many will quote it back to you.

Look one level down in the same release. Goods rose 4.2%. Services rose 8.3%. Rent was among the named drivers, and Ashanti, at 9.8%, was the highest region. The Statistician also cautioned that a low rate means prices are rising more slowly, not that they are falling. Prices rose another 1.1% from August to September alone.

Now think about what a school buys. Rent or the cost of keeping a building. Salaries. Transport. Electricity and water. Almost all of it is a service. Then there is diesel, which the NPA's price floor moved from GH¢16.77 to GH¢17.97 on 1 October, about 7% in one window.

So the 5.2% belongs to the country's shopping basket. Your school buys a different basket, and it has been getting dearer faster.

An hour before mid-term

Mid-term is 5–6 November, and Term 2 fee conversations tend to start around it. Before then, do this on a single sheet:

1. Write down your five biggest cost lines. For most schools they are salaries, rent or building costs, transport, utilities, and food if you run a canteen.
2. Next to each, put what it cost in January and what it costs now.
3. Work out the percentage change for each, line by line.
4. Weight them by size. A 15% rise in a line that is 40% of your spending matters far more than 30% on one that is 2%.

For example, if the rent you paid in January was GH¢4,000 a month and it is GH¢4,600 now, that line is up 15%, three times the headline. You don't need a clever model. You need five rows you can show someone.

This is the same idea as pricing from the school's own lines instead of one national percentage, which we wrote about in August. The only new part is the timing: the sheet takes an hour now and is a lot harder to build in the week the fee circular goes out.

Why it holds up in the room

A fee conversation with parents usually goes wrong at one point: someone says "inflation is only 5%" and the proprietor has no answer except "costs are going up." That is true and unconvincing. "Our largest line rose 15% since January, and here it is" is a different sentence. It doesn't ask parents to trust you. It lets them check.

It also protects you from the opposite mistake, which is setting the increase at a round number because it feels reasonable. Your own costs may justify less than you feared on some lines and more on others. You only find out by looking.

Your parents hear the national figure. Your invoices come from the other one.