The Fee Is One Number. The Bill Is Another.

A parent in Tema told the Ghana News Agency last month what she spent on learning materials at her children's private school, before any fees: GH¢895 for a child in Class One, GH¢996 for one in Class Five, GH¢1,990 for one in JHS. She said some of the books had to be bought from the school itself, and that the prices differed from the open market.

You may have a perfectly good reason for every line on your book list. She wasn't asking about the reasons. She added it up.

That is what parents do now. They don't compare your fee with the school down the road. They compare what left their wallet in September with what the circular said in August. If the two numbers are far apart, the gap becomes the story, and you are not in the room when it is told.

What to do before Term 2 fees go out

Mid-term break is 5–6 November, and PTA meetings tend to fall around it. Before the fee circular, make one page that lists every cost the school sets for a family. Not only fees. All of it:

• tuition and the levies attached to it
• books and workbooks, with the price of each and whether they must be bought from the school
• uniform, PE kit, sports wear
• printing, exam fees, trips, ICT
• feeding and transport, if you run them

Beside each line, add one more column: required, or optional. If a book can be bought elsewhere, say so. If it can't, say why in a sentence ("the school workbook is printed for our scheme of work").

Then total it per class. That number, per child, is the real price of your school. Publish it with the fee, in the same document, in the same type size.

Why it works

Parents are not angry that things cost money. They are angry at finding out in instalments. A bill that arrives in pieces (fees now, books later, a levy in week three) teaches them that every number you give is provisional, and after that they stop believing the first one.

The list also does something for you. Building it, you will find costs nobody on staff approved: a workbook that changed edition, a levy no one remembers setting. Better you find them in October than a parent finds them in January.

Last week's cost sheet was about your costs against January. This is the other side of the same ledger: what a family pays you in total. Do both and the fee conversation changes. You can show the school's numbers, and the family's, on one table.

A fee is what you say you charge. The total is what the parent has already worked out.