School fees put Congo’s future at threat

Poor attendance levels in schools are ruining the Democratic Republic of Congo’s (DRC's) chances of future development, warn aid workers.

Primary school education in the Central African country is neither compulsory nor free. Although the country has vast amounts of oil, and hence wealth, many children are not able to go to school because parents can’t afford the enrolment fees. The country’s wealth is unequally distributed between the people.

One of the main reasons why children, do not go to or stay at school is that their family has to pay for educational supplies such as pens, slates, notebooks and crayons.

Half of all children do not go to school in Congo, which is in the midst of violence, particularly in the east and north-east. According to the latest figures from the United Nations, of those that do make it to school, most are boys and only half will reach the fifth grade.

At the beginning of the school year, primary school headteacher Marie Rose Mbimba had 754 students. Three months later, only 516 of them were still enrolled. “The problem is the financial difficulties that parents are facing,” Ms Mbimba told researchers for UNICEF. “They can’t afford the education fees because a lot of them are out of a job.”

Congo’s government puts about eight per cent of its money into education, which is not nearly enough to pay for all its schools’ running costs. Parents are expected to pick up the rest of the tab and have to pay an average £40 a year, for each child, to help with teacher’s wages, maintenance expenses and other operating costs. For the typical Congolese family earning, on average, only £86 per year, these costs can make it impossible for parents to send one, let alone all, of their children to school.

Many children sandwich their school day around morning and evening jobs, to make ends meet, and in many families only one of the children goes to school while the rest work.

“The future of any country is its children, and I think in many countries it has been an uphill struggle to convince governments that investing in children is an investment in the future,” said UNICEF Representative Pierrette Vu Thi in Congo.