The Education Minister says registration, processing and admission fees are gone for new secondary students. The Ministry’s own circular shows what parents can still be charged, and what schools may now owe back.
Accountability · Education
Free registration, up to a point: the fine print on SVG’s new school fee rules
The Education Minister says registration, processing and admission fees are gone for new secondary students. The Ministry’s own circular shows what parents can still be charged, and what schools may now owe back.
When Education Minister Phillip Jackson told parents on Tuesday that registration fees were being scrapped for new secondary school students, the announcement landed as welcome cost-of-living relief. The Ministry’s own correspondence to principals, issued the same day, tells a narrower and more complicated story: tuition stays free, some fees come off, and a floor of charges remains firmly in place.
In a recorded statement carried on NBC Radio, Jackson said fees designated as registration, processing and admission fees would be removed from the registration process for Form 1 students entering public and government-assisted private secondary schools. He framed it as part of the New Democratic Party government’s wider commitment to ease the cost of education, and said the specifics would come from each school in a revised registration package.
Free tuition is not new. It has been law since 2006.
Circular 167/2026, signed by Chief Education Officer Mavis Findlay-Joseph and sent to heads of secondary schools, opens by restating Section 16 of the Education Act No. 34 of 2006: no student or parent may be charged tuition or other costs for attendance at a public or government-assisted school, apart from limited exceptions. That guarantee is two decades old. What the circular actually adjusts is the ancillary charges that schools attach to registration, not tuition itself.
The same document then sets out exactly what schools may still charge, and this is where the relief narrows.
It is always good to read the fine print. A widely shared post on the circular
What parents can still be charged
The circular lists four Required Items that remain payable: a school badge, a school tie, a Parent-Teacher Association fee, and a physical education uniform or polo shirt. It then lists ten Optional Items, including exercise books, a school handbook, report and homework books, art supplies, a music recorder, a 32GB flash drive, the school co-operative and the book loan scheme. Free tuition, in other words, has never meant a free registration day.
What it means for your bill
Tuition remains free, as it has since 2006. Under the revised guidelines, here is the difference between what schools may still charge and what should now come off the registration package.
Still chargeable
- School badge
- School tie
- PTA fee
- PE uniform / polo
- Optional supplies (exercise books, handbook, art and music supplies, flash drive, book loan)
Should come off
- Registration fee
- Processing fee
- Admission fee
- Other charges not on the Ministry list (for example activity, security and hygiene, and stand-alone sports club fees)
Two examples from packages advertised this week show the gap. At Thomas Saunders Secondary, the $325 “mandatory” list included a $50 activity fee and a $75 sports club fee, neither of which appears on the Ministry’s approved list. At the Girls’ High School, the $195 “processing” block led with a $50 processing fee, exactly the category the Minister named for removal, alongside a $45 security and hygiene charge that is also absent from the circular.
The Ministry has not published a line-by-line ruling for each school. The comparison above maps advertised packages against the circular’s stated Required and Optional lists.
The refund problem the timing created
The circular instructs principals to revise their registration packages and, where registration has already happened, to arrange refunds for parents on any fees collected that are no longer applicable. That is not a hypothetical. The Girls’ High School registered new students on Tuesday, the same day the policy and the circular landed, and Thomas Saunders Secondary is due to register on Thursday. Some families paid the old schedule before the new rule existed. Jackson acknowledged as much, saying he takes responsibility for the timing and asking parents to be patient while schools adjust.
He added that the administration was acting in the best interests of our students and their families as it worked toward equitable and affordable access to education.
The funding question left open
The circular also acknowledges the financial pressure schools face and encourages them to pursue “innovative and sustainable approaches to revenue generation” within the law. That is a quiet admission that cutting these fees leaves a gap, with no replacement funding announced. It is worth watching whether the surviving PTA fee, still a Required Item, becomes the catch-all that absorbs what activity and processing fees used to cover.
NDP promise tracker · cost of education
- The commitmentEase the cost of education for Vincentian families, tied by the Minister to the Education Act and PM Godwin Friday’s policy on access to education.
- Action taken14 July 2026: removal of registration, processing and admission fees for Form 1 entrants; refunds ordered for fees already collected that fall outside the approved list.
- StatusPartly delivered Applies to new (Form 1) students only; a required-item floor remains; refunds not yet confirmed as paid.
- Still outstandingQuestions raised publicly about a separate pledge on college registration and fees, which falls under the Higher Education portfolio, not this circular.
What to watch
The measure is real but limited. It removes a set of registration-stage charges for new secondary students and orders refunds where they were wrongly collected, while leaving free tuition exactly where the law already had it and preserving a mandatory floor of badge, tie, PTA and uniform costs. The tests now are practical: whether schools issue revised packages quickly, whether refunds actually reach parents who paid early, whether the relief is extended beyond Form 1, and whether lost fee income quietly reappears under another name.
Filed under: SVG News, Education, Politics · Tags: school fees, Education Act, Phillip Jackson, NDP, registration fees, Circular 167, promise tracker, secondary schools, GHS, TSSS