19 October 2010

Trauma students face when fees are no...

Many times we find that we have to spend lots of money; for instance during big days like chrismas, regular visits to pubs and come January, you will have exhausted both your account and month’s advance. Your pockets will be virtually empty and guess what? Children have to report to school.

As a student, I felt secure going to school when my fees was fully paid. I felt a deep-seated right to walk straight with my head held high.

However, whenever my fees was not completed, I thought my name would at any moment be read among the fees defaulters, consequently humiliating me before fellow students.

A friend at a college went through a similar predicament. His father told him that tuition would be paid later that semester. Full of hope, he waited until the last quarter of the semester when the bad news was broken to him that Dad could not get the fees. This was after three months of preparation for exams, which he did not sit for. He did not report for the next semester fearing the same fate would befall him.

Ironically, dad got the money but his son had not bothered to attended lectures.
Research shows that in the examination rooms, students who have defaulted on school fees payment get anxious when an invigilator walks in. Whereas those, who have cleared tuition fees, will not be bothered, their counterparts are affected and lose concentration. In the end, their academic performance declines.

“Students are overcome by uncertainty and so the motivation to read for exams lessens,” students do not relax when their school fees are not paid. “They are pessimistic doubting their fees will be paid at all. Why should I bother reading yet I am not going to sit for papers anyway?” if a student is not well prepared, he or she likely to perform poorly especially if they are compelled to run up and down trying to find the tuition fees. Students also feel out of place when others have cleared tuition fees while they have not. Sometimes at the school assemblies, names of fees defaulters are read out loud. “It feels quite humiliating when the selection is done openly and the list of defaulters made public,” and being dismissed from school exposes the financial woes of the student’s family. This indirectly affects the student’s self-esteem and self-image.
It can cause psychological torture that a student collapses when faced with the possibility of missing exams. It is a great challenge for a student to understand such a situation. It seems as if their world has been shattered.

Dear reader out there what do you think we should do to counter such instances? What is your experience like elsewhere? How have you managed to maneuver?

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