A mother applies for exemption from payment of school fees and is granted 30%. The father never applies at all. So what does the school write off?
In most schools, the answer is 30%. And in most schools, that answer is wrong.
This is one of the most common questions we get from public school debtor management teams, and it is the one where I see schools give away the money without ever realising they have done it.
The mistake is understandable. A school receives an exemption application from one parent, applies the formula correctly, grants 30%, files the outcome letter, and reduces the account by 30%. Every step of that feels right. The formula was applied properly. The parent qualified. The reduction was granted.
But the exemption was granted to a person, not to an account. And when only one of two liable parents applies, that distinction is worth a great deal of money.
Exemption attaches to the parent, not to the learner's account
Both parents are liable for their child's school fees. That liability does not disappear because the parents are divorced, separated, or were never married. It does not disappear because one parent has primary care. It does not disappear because a divorce order says one parent is responsible for education costs, that order governs the relationship between the two parents, not the relationship between each parent and the school.
When a parent applies for exemption, the school applies the formula to that parent's income, dependants and annual school fees. The outcome is a reduction in that parent's liability. It says nothing whatsoever about the other parent, whose income was never considered, and who never applied.
A parent who never applied for exemption cannot receive the benefit of an exemption. That sounds obvious written down. It is not how most accounts are treated.
What this looks like with actual numbers
Take annual school fees of R30 000 for one learner. The mother applies for exemption. The formula is applied to her income, and she is granted 30%. The father does not apply.
Here is what each parent's position actually is:
The mother. She applied, she qualified, and her liability is reduced by 30%. She remains responsible for the balance of R21 000, and the school should be putting a payment arrangement in place for that amount. Her exemption does not excuse her from the remaining 70%. It only caps her exposure.
The father. He did not apply. No formula was ever applied to his income. His liability is not reduced by anything, so he remains liable for the full R30 000, and the school is entitled to pursue him for all of it, including the R9 000 the mother was excused from.
The school is owed R30 000 in total and will never collect more than R30 000. That is not the point. The point is which portion of it the school treats as recoverable. Most schools treat the R9 000 as gone. It is not gone. It is recoverable from the father, in full, because he never applied for relief from it.
Run that R9 000 across a debtor book. A school with two hundred exemption-affected accounts, where a meaningful share involve divorced or separated parents and only one parent has applied, is writing off amounts every year that it was never required to write off. Nobody notices, because each individual write-off looks correct on its own file.
Why schools keep getting this wrong
I do not believe this occurs due to carelessness by debtor management teams. Rather, it stems from a fundamental structural flaw:
Accounts are organised around the learner or family instead of the individual parents. Because most financial software displays a single consolidated balance per child or per family, any approved exemption simply reduces that single total. The system is incapable of assigning the reduction to a specific parent.
The only apparent workaround is to split the family into separate accounts for the mother and the father. However, this is not a viable solution. It doubles the administrative workload for debtor management teams and distorts the school's financial figures. Because both parents are being billed for the same underlying fees, separate accounts make it appear as though the school is trying to collect the same 70% twice, causing reporting chaos.
When the other parent cannot be found
This scenario arises constantly where a single parent applies for a school fee exemption, but the other parent is entirely untraceable. Legally, the application must still be assessed, and subsequently granted or refused, based solely on the applying parent's income. However, an untraceable parent changes the operational steps the school must take behind the scenes.
The tracking process requires a dual tracing responsibility. The parent submitting the application must first attempt to locate the missing parent and provide a formal affidavit explicitly stating that the other parent is completely untraceable by them. Following this, the school must independently attempt to trace the parent to verify and confirm these claims.
To independently verify the lack of contact details, the school can pull an adverse finding report through a credit bureau. Legally, no parental consent is required to run this specific type of report for account management purposes. Throughout this process, the school must maintain meticulous record-keeping, documenting every single step taken to trace the absent parent, including exactly what was attempted, through which channels, and on what dates.
Documenting this timeline is critical because an untraceable parent's financial liability remains 100% intact, and has been the entire time. If the missing parent is located at a later stage, the school will rely on its documented tracing records as it will provide valuable insights into that parent's financial profile. This intelligence allows the school to implement the most effective collection action based on the parent's actual probability to pay.
Actions that can help streamline the process
The fix is part procedural and part financial, but it is precisely what can help stabilise your school's cash flow. None of this requires a change in the law, a new policy, or a difficult decision from your governing body. It requires five interconnected actions in your exemption and debtor management processes.
Apply the formula to the applicant's share only. The non-applying parent's liability remains 100% intact. Write this strictly into your exemption procedure so that a single parent's relief never results in a default write-off for the entire family.
Secure a payment plan for the applying parent. Once the exemption percentage is calculated, immediately transition the applying parent onto a structured payment plan if the exemption was only partial. Proactively collect their remaining monthly balance rather than leaving it to accumulate.
Target the non-applying parent through existing collections. Do not treat the untraceable or absent parent as non-existent. Activate your existing collection strategies and debt recovery actions specifically against the non-applying parent to establish contact and demand their share.
Leverage adverse finding reports for intelligent tracing. Use an adverse finding report to track down the missing parent. Use the financial data within this report to help determine their actual probability to pay, allowing you to tailor your legal and collection actions effectively.
Navigate the financial software limitation. Managing these separate liabilities in your financial software remains a challenge, as most systems track balances per child or family rather than per parent. Until software evolves, the ledger must be manually monitored to ensure you do not inadvertently double-collect or distort your financial figures.
Playbook 1 is where every great payment culture begins. Free and practical.
What this is really about
Exemption from payment of school fees is not a discretionary act of goodwill by a school. It is a statutory entitlement with a prescribed formula, and a school that applies it correctly is doing its job. But applying it correctly means applying it to the right person, for the right amount, and knowing what remains owing afterwards.
The schools that get this right are not harder on parents than anyone else. They are simply clearer about who owes what. And that clarity is worth more to a school's finances than almost any collection action taken further down the line.
An exemption reduces what the applying parent owes. It does not reduce what the other parent owes, nor should it automatically reduce the account as a whole. Legally, an exemption is granted per individual parent, not per account.
Daleen Vorster
Co-founder, Jumping Fox Software and Jonker Vorster Attorneys
Attorney specialising in education and credit law since 2002
