Success Adegor: Public Schools Not Authorized To Accept Fees – Delta Govt

The Commissioner for Basic and Secondary Education in Delta state, Dr Chiedu Ebie, has said that public schools in the state are not authorized to accept fees from pupils.

Ebie was reacting to the incident of the seven-year-old girl, Success Adegor who was sent away from school over exam fees, which went viral on the social media.

The state authorities said the levies imposed on pupils in the school were illegal and subsequently suspended the head teacher.

Recall that the Federal Government introduced the Universal Basic Education (UBE) programme to provide free primary and junior secondary education for all in 1999.

Ebie, said Delta State government, like many others across the country, runs free education policy at primary and secondary school levels in government-owned schools.

He added that the pupils do not pay tuition to attend school. However, levies were approved for consumables (N100) and sports (N750). Any other levy was illegal.

“Any school head doing this is doing so in defiance of the government order and should be reported to the ministry for appropriate sanctions. We have sanctioned school heads and CIEs; some were demoted, others were withdrawn from urban to rural areas, while CIEs have been recalled from their duty posts.

“We operate free education in Delta State. However, we discovered overtime that some school heads take the law into their hands by imposing illegal levies. We have battled this in the last three and half years of this administration. We have had school heads suspended and demoted. This may well be another case of a school head taking laws into her hands and imposing levies that ought not to be imposed on the students. We have what we referred to as ‘approved levy’ in our schools. It is issued by the ministry (Education).

“Approved levy is N100 for consumables and no school head has the right to collect above N100. Also, for sports wears because of inter-house sports and other sporting activities, we have a flat rate of N750. It’s clearly specified and clearly defined. In this case, I understand that it was exam levy of N800 and a levy for a book of N1,000 and another one for N300,’’ Ebie revealed.