She was ranked in the top ten in the country. She did not get a bonus.
This is what we are doing to the people who keep our schools financially alive — and then we wonder why the numbers do not improve.
I have been working with debtor management teams in South African schools since 2002. In that time I have sat across from hundreds of people doing one of the most undervalued jobs in education. I have seen what this role takes out of people. And I have run out of polite ways to talk about it.
A member of our debtor management community was ranked among the top ten best performing collection team members on our platform in 2025, out of every school we work with, nationwide. When the year ended, her school did not give her a bonus. For some reason that remains beyond my understanding, management decided she did not qualify.
At a completely different school, a request for R300 for training was declined. Not because the school does not have R300 — the annual budget runs well into the millions. The collection team member responsible for bringing in that money was, in my opinion, simply not worth R300 of investment to management. “Take it from the petty cash if you have to!” That was my exact response. I meant every word of it.
These are not isolated incidents. They are a pattern. And the pattern tells you everything about how this role is valued, and why so many schools are stuck with the same debtor management and collections problems year after year.
Let me tell you who is paying the price for that pattern.
Her name is Samantha...
She is lying awake at 5am running through her day before it has started. Not because she is disorganised — but because the job she has been given requires this kind of preparation just to survive it. She is thinking about the arrear account that has been sitting unresolved for months, the one where the parents have an answer for everything and evidence for nothing. She is thinking about the attorneys who sent a list of questions last week that she still cannot answer properly, because nobody ever trained her on what is required at that stage of the legal process. She is thinking about the parent meeting at 10am where she will need every ounce of emotional intelligence she has. And somewhere in between, she is also thinking about dinner and her children’s homework, because this job has a way of following you home, whether you invite it or not.
By the time she walks into the small office she shares with two colleagues, she has been at it for hours. She opens her screen, and before she has taken a breath, a learner is at the door with a note from a parent asking for a statement. A teacher squeezes past to use the printer, yes, the printer lives in her office, and yes, this is a daily occurrence. The phone rings. It is the attorneys asking for updated contact details on a parent who was handed over months ago and has since made himself completely unreachable. Then the finance manager appears in the doorway to mention that the 120-day column on the age analysis looks the same as last week. He frames it as an observation. It does not feel like one.
She has not yet touched a single arrear account. She has not sent a single email. It is 10 am, and she is already behind.
I know what her desk looks like. I know what her inbox looks like. And I know exactly what her face does when management asks why the numbers have not improved. I have seen it hundreds of times. It is the face of someone who has been set up to fail and knows it — but shows up anyway, every single day, because the work still needs to be done.
Within our community of debtor management teams across South Africa, we talk about this openly. We see the egos. We see the disconnect between management and the people doing the actual work. We see the absence of support, the lack of investment, and the growing gap between what schools expect from this role and what they are actually prepared to give it. As a community, we know what works, because we have seen it work, in the schools that made the decision to do things differently. This piece is not about making anyone feel bad. It is about stopping the pretending, because the truth about what it takes to run an effective debtor management and collection operation in a South African school is not a secret. It is just not getting the attention it deserves.
There are schools that get this right, a few, but they exist. Schools where management is genuinely involved, not to check in and give orders, but to truly understand and support the work being done. Where the debtor management team is given the space to focus, with proper tools, real training, and a job description that stops at debtor management, not at whatever else needs doing. Where everyone has a shared understanding of what this role demands and what it takes to do it well. Those schools see a different result. The cash flow reflects it, the parents respond differently when the process is consistent and leaves little room for creative avoidance, and the people doing the work, the ones who arrive every morning carrying more than most people around them realise, do their work with confidence, because they know they are supported. That matters more than any system or strategy ever could.
If you lead a school and you are reading this, ask yourself one honest question — does what you expect from your debtor management team match what you are actually giving them to work with? The investment, the support, the tools, the recognition, the rewards. If the answer is no, you already know what needs to change. And if you are part of a debtor management team, going through every day with too much on your plate and too little acknowledgement — this piece is for you, and it is long overdue.
Daleen Vorster
Co-founder, Jumping Fox Software and Jonker Vorster Attorneys
Attorney specialising in education and credit law since 2002
