Schools reopen profit should not lead
DAR ES SALAAM: NEXT week schools reopen, carrying hopes, anxieties and heavy costs. Education thrives when classrooms are full, motivated and accessible to every child.
Yet each reopening season also awakens an old habit: Treating school resumption as a marketplace for quick profits.
This mindset threatens learning, equity and national progress. We therefore appeal, firmly and respectfully, to private school proprietors and traders, especially those selling uniforms, stationery, textbooks, shoes, bags and related necessities, to choose humanity over excess margins.
Do not inflate prices simply because demand rises. Do not turn children’s futures into bargaining chips. When prices soar, attendance falls. When attendance falls, society loses.
Uniforms, exercise books and pens are gateways to learning, not luxury goods. Artificial scarcity and opportunistic pricing punish parents already stretched by food, rent and transport. Traders make livelihoods through fair turnover, not predatory spikes.
Reasonable pricing will move volumes, build trust and sustain businesses beyond opening week. Remember that today’s pupils are tomorrow’s customers, workers and leaders. Exploiting them now undermines the very economy everyone depends upon.
To private school owners, your role extends beyond balance sheets. You supplement public provision and expand national capacity. Flexibility during resumption is not weakness; it is leadership. Absorb as many learners as possible. Engage parents honestly.
Allow reasonable payment plans. Avoid sending children home solely because fees are incomplete. Every day lost erodes confidence, routines and potential. Schools grow stronger when communities trust them and trust is earned through compassion matched with accountability.
Equally, parents and guardians also carry responsibility. Bring every child of school going age to school, without exception. Disability is not inability.
Children living with physical challenges deserve classrooms adapted to their needs and peers who learn inclusion by practice.
When families delay enrolment out of fear or stigma, talents wither unseen. Education systems improve when enrolment reflects real society, diverse and resilient.
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As schools open, let empathy guide commerce and administration. Lower barriers, not hopes.
Keep children learning, not waiting. A fair start, this term will echo for years, lifting households, strengthening schools and advancing the nation.
Education is a shared project. Let us protect it together. We acknowledge economic pressures, rising costs and thin margins faced by businesses and schools alike. However, ethics must anchor enterprise.
Transparent pricing, receipts and clear communication prevent conflict and rumor. Community dialogue before term begins can align expectations and solve shortages collaboratively.
Authorities, associations and faith groups should encourage voluntary codes of conduct during resumption periods.
Small discounts, bundled supplies and secondhand exchanges can keep children equipped without shame.
Where profits are necessary, let them be modest, predictable and justified. The social return on affordable education is immense, multiplying skills, productivity and civic peace.
When stakeholders act responsibly together, classrooms stay full, teachers stay motivated and children stay hopeful, learning that society values them beyond money.
Let this reopening mark restraint and resolve. Choose fairness today so doors remain open tomorrow. Our children watch our choices closely.
May they see care, balance and courage and carry those lessons forward, long after the first bell rings.
Shared responsibility can turn a simple term into a turning point for access, dignity and opportunity nationwide for children everywhere, starting now together please.
