The Furore Over Private Schools’ Commercial Instincts – Perspectives from Enideneze Etete
In this report, Enideneze Etete, journalist and public affairs analyst shares a thought provocative perspectives titled The Furore Over Private Schools’ Commercial Instincts.
Public outcry against commercial instincts of private schools, has attracted stringent policy measures in a few states of Nigeria, and calls are mounting for same actions in many states.
The issues bother on high school fees, sundry charges; graduation and end-of-term/session ceremonies for which pupils and students who are passing out wear academic gowns and parents are made to pay money. Other matters are deviation from approved general curricular, prescribed subjects, recommended books and calendar.
Worried by the trends, parents and guardians called for government intervention. Concerned citizens have equally lent their voices in support of the complaints.
Most pronounced is the issue of customized textbooks in which pupils and students do assignments inside and submit for assessment. This prevents younger ones in a family from inheriting them, to reduce financial stress for parents.
The other issue is parents being made to pay for school events, notably graduation ceremonies, including academic gowns. Some parents and others feel that school owners ought to foot the bills of such ceremonies as business promotion strategy.
Another argument is that graduation ceremonies and adorning of gowns, could instill a false sense of academic achievement in pupils/students, while greater task lies ahead of them.
Indeed, the ban on customized textbooks and graduation ceremonies in a few states and calls for replicating same in other states are laudable. This is in view of the extreme commercialization of education by school owners, and the austere economy taking tolls on parents.
Nonetheless, private schools, like any other business ventures approved by government are not set up by the owners for charity, even though cut-throat profit motive undermines social obligation of every enterprise.
Moreover, venturing into private school business, as in private hospital venture, goes with public service responsibility, not just pursuance of profit.
More so, private school business might not be such that rakes in huge profit in the short-run, thus patience is required on the part of the entrepreneur.
However, it needs to be understood that closing and graduation ceremonies are vital extra-curricular rituals in schools, whether pre-tertiary or tertiary.
Apart from entertainment and fun for students and spectators, such ceremonies are public relations, marketing communication and advertising strategies. The events brand and promote schools to retain existing clients and attract new ones.
School events also make students to play or observe roles in which participants mimic characters: professionals in various professions, and cultural actors. For instance, kings, parents, broadcasters, lawyers, medical doctors, bankers, teachers, scientists, engineers and the clergy. The performances, thus instill ambition in the students, to aspire for career in the roles dramatized, while also transmitting core values.
Furthermore, school business like those in other highly regulatory sectors, for instance health, banking and finance, oil and gas sector, etcetera, also have peculiar advertising and promotion regulations as stipulated in the guidelines of the Advertising Regulatory Council of Nigeria (ARCON) Act, and other relevant bodies.
Given the statutory limitations on certain advertising strategies and tactics, business outfits in highly regulated sectors often adopt indirect methods. Such indirect strategies are events; fund raisers; founder’s day, anniversaries; corporate social responsibility, philanthropy and community relations; issues, advocacy and corporate image advertising.
Others are public enlightenment campaigns; media relations: news releases, appearances on radio and television educational programmes to indirectly publicize and market intangible products or services, at optimal cost.
Government, which approved the private schools have a duty to ensure compliance to laws and regulations in the sector, instead of outright ban of end of term/session events.
Regulators could therefore, reinforce extant rules or formulate new ones that would protect both the interest of parents and the operational cost and revenue concerns of school owners, in this harsh economy.
For instance, graduation ceremony/wearing of gowns could be done for senior secondary 3 only, mainly funded by the school, though with free-will donations from parents, and a regulated fee for hiring of gown.
Cultural and sports fiestas could as well be funded by school, with free donations from parents, and fees regulated by government.
Moreover, graduation or wearing of academic gowns is not the major problem awaiting solution in Nigeria, nor the cause of the economic downturn in the country.
After all, Nigeria’s problem is not dearth of graduates, graduation ceremonies nor wearing of gowns, for anyone to say that these would deter young ones from aspiring to higher studies.
Instead, the economy should be fixed to provide jobs for the teeming unemployed tertiary graduates.
Although customizing textbooks to prevent inheritance, impact on the finances of parents and guardians, the ban ought to affect normal texts that are customized. Assignment or workbooks could be exempted as the name implies. Alternatively, assignments in workbooks could be done into notebooks.
Governments at all levels should also improve existing schools, open new ones, and inspect both private and public schools regularly.
The rich should give back to society by establishing tuition-free or subsidized schools.
Private school owners should take a cue from the American public relations expert, Arthur W. Page, who theorized in 1927 that, “… all businesses … begin with public permission and exist by public approval” hence should act responsibly to avoid adverse public policy.
In this sense, private school operators should willingly reconcile their commercial interest with the interests of their publics and society, where need arises, as another American public relations guru, Harwood L. Childs theorized far back 1940.
The Furore Over Private Schools’ Commercial Instincts is an online Perspectives from Enideneze Etete.
