Private education is a prestigious and well renowned institution of the Australian Education landscape. Parents have a sense of pride to know their children attend a private school. The sense of community and belonging is stronger. Unfortunately this form of education comes at a cost, and many parents are racking up unpaid debt for their children’s education.
Schools often keep students on, even if the parents aren’t meeting the tuition fees, because they do still receive funding from the government. It is financially a better position for the schools to have a child in the seat, and ethically it is better to give a child an education, than to deny them one due to money not being paid.
However what can happen is this situation becomes the norm and children go right through school without the parents paying the tuition fees. Why? Why don’t the schools demand payment, rattle the can at the parents and ask for the tuition fees they are rightly owed?
Firstly, schools can feel uncomfortable when it comes to applying the skills of debt collecting and some families genuinely do go through financial hardship. Secondly, it can be a delicate balancing act of not upsetting parents and students, versus being given what you are owed. Thirdly, there are parents who just do not listen to the schools when they ask to get paid. The parents have not had to pay before, why pay now?
This non-payment can lead to a reputation for the school not collecting fees. Unfortunately in some communities whilst there are some families facing genuine financial hardship, there are also individuals who will take advantage and seek to give their kids a free education at a private school. The unintended consequence of this can be that the school has to recoup on monies owed by increasing tuition fees for subsequent years, penalising future students for the behaviour of past students.
So what can you do?
Work with Kearley Lewis
- We help you set up your collection procedures to ensure you have a credit policy in place and that you follow it.
- A flat fee, yearly membership, gives you access to populate and send final notice letters to parents whenever you need them.
- Kearley Lewis can handle collections for you and have the difficult conversations.
- We do not collect a commission unless we collect your debt, and we offer extremely competitive rates for schools.
- Speak to our legal team to help you out even further.
With our way of helping you collect debt, we build a relationship with you, and we build a relationship with the parents who owe you money, believe it or not. We are personable and dedicated to ensuring we don’t burn bridges with the work that we do. If families are facing financial hardship, we’ll discuss this with you.
If you’re interested in getting paid, and not being left in debt, then call us on 03 9629 8777, or drop us an email here at collect@kearlylewis.com.au
See what our clients say about us here.