School Fee Notifications Sent to Wrong Addresses

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23 February 2006

School Fee Notifications Sent to Wrong Addresses

1. This week, the Ministry of Education (MOE) sent notifications to parents of 510,000 students regarding the school fees they have to pay, together with their children’s Edusave Statement of Account. Owing to human error, about 39,000 of these were sent to the wrong addresses. The addresses of these students were extracted from the wrong data field containing old addresses given in their birth certificates, rather than their current addresses. Thus, students who had changed their addresses were affected.

2. This is the first year that MOE decided to send the school fee notification together with the Edusave Statement of Account, in order to reduce postage costs. In effecting this change, the error unfortunately occurred when the wrong addresses were used for mailing.

3. MOE is sorry about the error and the inconvenience it has caused. Explanatory letters will be sent to the affected households within the next two days. Owing to this error, some parents may receive their bills late. For parents who are not able to make payment of the bill by the due date stated, the Ministry will carry forward the amount to the March bill.

4. MOE apologises for any inconvenience caused. It will strengthen its processes and continue to strive to improve its services.