Schools are struggling to recover unpaid fees from parents while the government continues to owe institutions money under the Basic Education Assistance Module (BEAM), raising questions about who should bear the cost of educating vulnerable learners.
Pumula legislator Sichelesile Mahlangu says the introduction of the Zimbabwe Social Registry (ZISO) in 2027 could provide an opportunity to assess whether the government will address the outstanding BEAM payments, which have left schools struggling to meet operational costs.
Speaking during Monday’s edition of This Morning on Asakhe, held under the topic When School Fees Become a Debt: Are Zimbabwean Children Paying the Price?, Mahlangu said the government should settle its outstanding obligations to schools rather than allow parents to shoulder debts arising from unpaid fees for learners supported under the programme.
She said legislators had repeatedly raised concerns over BEAM disbursements, with schools reporting that they had not received substantial payments since 2022.
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Mahlangu, who is also a member of the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Public Service, Labour and Social Welfare, questioned why some schools had turned to debt collectors without first engaging community leaders who had previously helped negotiate payment plans with parents.
She recalled that MPs and other community representatives had met school heads and parents at the beginning of 2026 to discuss outstanding fees. The engagements resulted in payment agreements which some parents initially honoured before worsening economic conditions affected their ability to continue paying.
Mahlangu said schools should have maintained communication with community leaders before resorting to debt collection.
“Each and every time, when a parent has a challenge with the school, he or she calls the local MP or local councillor or the residents’ association. But if they could have approached us or approached our offices before the debt collectors, I think it would have made it easier for us,” she said.
She argued that schools should not be expected to meet government-imposed financial obligations while the state itself was failing to pay for learners enrolled under BEAM.
“Even though they want to do their audit, they should pay the previous debts, because, like what my brother is saying, three quarters of children in school are on BEAM. How can you expect the school to pay the levies that are demanded by the government?” she said.
Mahlangu said MPs had raised the issue during the budget process, citing concerns over delays involving the Ministry of Finance and the ministry responsible for social welfare.
She said the introduction of ZISO presented an opportunity to determine whether the government would clear its outstanding obligations, questioning why parents were being pursued for unpaid fees when schools had no equivalent mechanism to recover money owed by the state.
“Let’s just hope 2027, since they’re having that issue with ZISO they’re introducing, let’s see how that is going to work, whether they are going to clear debts. Looking at it, the debt collectors want to collect from the parents, so what about BEAM? Who is going to do debt collecting from the government?” she said.
Meanwhile, Amalgamated Rural Teachers Union of Zimbabwe (ARTUZ) spokesperson Thembakuye Maphepha Moyo said the government’s failure to disburse BEAM funds was undermining learners’ constitutional right to education.
Moyo said Section 75 of the Constitution places an obligation on the state to progressively realise the right to education, arguing that parents should not be expected to carry the financial burden when the government was failing to meet its responsibilities.
“It is the government’s obligation to fund education. On that note, these other things are just political gimmicks. Where you hear a minister saying the school can take parents to debt collectors for the recovery of these levies, when they pretty well know that it is their obligation to fund education,” he said.
Moyo said schools depended on levies to meet operational expenses and implement their annual budgets, meaning the failure to disburse BEAM funds had left administrators struggling to provide essential resources for teaching and learning.
He explained that schools usually prepare their budgets towards the end of the year, determining how much parents would be expected to contribute in the following academic year.
However, when anticipated BEAM payments are not received, schools are forced to scale down planned activities, affecting their ability to function effectively.
The situation is particularly difficult in rural communities, where many parents cannot afford school levies because of prevailing economic challenges, he said.
Moyo also rejected the characterisation of outstanding BEAM payments as delays, arguing that the government had failed to disburse the funds over several years.
“Let me start by saying we are currently not talking about a backlog, as much as we cannot talk about delays, because a delay is, this is 2026, November. If someone has delayed paying you, they may have owed you in July. If it’s a severe delay, it could be in January. We are talking here of BEAM that has failed to disburse monies since 2022,” he said.
He acknowledged that some payments had been made in 2024 but said these were partial and had not cleared the outstanding amounts.
Moyo illustrated the impact by pointing to learners who enrolled in Form One in 2022 and had since progressed through several school years without their institutions receiving the corresponding BEAM payments.
This, he said, meant schools were carrying unpaid fees even for learners who had completed their education or moved to other institutions.
He questioned what had happened to the funds allocated to BEAM in the national budget and whether education was being given sufficient priority in government spending.
“The question is, what happens? Where does the money that was budgeted for, or the money that is being budgeted for, go? Are there any other priorities better than education when it comes to disbursement of budgets? These are the questions that we should be asking ourselves,” he said.
Moyo called on the government to reconsider the BEAM funding model, proposing that it be replaced with a capital grant distributed equitably among schools.
“As ARTUZ, we have said, why not do away with BEAM? Because it has failed to assist and introduce the capital grant that should be paid on an equity basis. I think maybe it could be another discussion that we can start on,” he said.
He maintained that the problem went beyond delayed payments, describing it as a prolonged failure by the government to meet its financial obligations to schools.
“But seriously, we are not talking about delays in payment of BEAM, we are talking about non-payment, looking at the scenario that I’ve just described,” he said.
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