Fellow Nairalanders, this issue has been bothering me for a while now and I recently had a conversation with an older friend over this issue and we seem to be on the same page that it is neither proper nor legal for students in Private Nursery/Primary and Secondary Schools to pay Development Levies to such institutions.

For one these schools make us parents pay School Fees every term instead of for the whole session, then they go ahead to charge stuffs like lesson fees, medical fees, end of term party fees, library fees, computer lab fees, exam fees etc, but the one that really bothers me is the charge of Development Levies by these schools in addition to all these fees mentioned above.

Private Schools are personal businesses of the Proprietor / Owner of the schools, by us bringing our kids there, we are already patronising their businesses, so why must we be made to pay a certain levy for the development of that business? To me this is just a way these proprietors rip parents of scarce resources. I and this older friend argued in the PTA that it is morally, socially and legally wrong for parents (customers) to be charged for developing another person's business. What we've seen happen is that these proprietors use this dev. levies to go and set-up another branch of the school in new location and the cycle continues just like that.

I think the Ministry Of Education needs to look at this aspect of operations of Private schools in this country and make them realise they cannot just charge arbitrary fees all because parents have to send their kids to their schools. Some schools charge as much as N10k as developmental levies - can you beat that? I feel it is a slap on our faces that we grudgingly pay these levies and we dont do anything about it.

I dont know if other Nairalanders feel the same way too... let's hear from you ladies and gentlemen!!!

Schools resume today....

Let\s see if parents will still keep quiet about this issue as there were no responses when it was posted since three weeks ago.

I would really love to read other parents opinion on this. Some schools charge as high as 100k. Is this legal?