Parents across different parts of Lagos are entering the 2026/2027 academic session with sharply different financial realities, but rising school-related expenses beyond tuition are emerging as a common concern, findings by The Nigeria Education News have shown.
Interviews with parents, teachers and a private-school operator across Ketu, Ojo, Jakande, Adaloko and Ikorodu revealed that while some families have seen little or no increase in school fees, others are contending with higher tuition, expensive textbooks, uniforms, transportation, feeding and a stream of additional charges after the payment of school fees.
For some households, the financial pressure is not concentrated in a single payment but builds gradually as schools reopen and children begin returning home with requests for money for books, notes, school activities and other requirements.
An IT instructor at a private school in Lagos, who spoke about the experiences of parents, said families in the school where he works generally pay relatively high tuition and are therefore more prepared for the major school expenses.
He, however, identified additional charges outside tuition as a recurring concern.
According to him, parents may pay their school fees believing that most of their financial obligations for the term or session have been settled, only to face further requests for money for textbooks, notes and other school requirements.
He said the repeated demands could become particularly difficult for parents who would prefer to make one major payment and plan their household finances around it.
The findings by The Nigeria Education News also showed a significant difference between households, with some parents reporting substantial increases in school-related expenditure while others said their children’s fees had remained unchanged.
In Ketu, Mrs Gabriel Olajumoke, who has two children in Primary 4 and Primary 1, estimated that she had spent almost N500,000 preparing them for the new session, including school fees, learning materials and other expenses.
She said the school fees had increased from the N40,000-plus range to between N50,000 and N60,000 per child, adding that she was not formally notified of the increase ahead of time.
She also put the cost of learning materials for her Primary 4 child at about N71,200 and that of the Primary 1 child at approximately N57,000.
Olajumoke said textbooks had become one of the most significant components of the back-to-school expenses.
She also recounted her experience with a previous school that reportedly shut down after collecting money from parents for books covering several terms. According to her, the money was not refunded.
At her children’s current school, she said parents were initially told they could purchase prescribed books outside the school provided they bought the correct titles, but that this position changed at the beginning of the new session.
She said some of the prescribed storybooks were also difficult to find outside the school, leaving her with little option but to purchase them through the school.
Beyond education-related expenses, Olajumoke said higher food prices were also adding to the cost of keeping children in school, while she raised concerns about the level of attention some teachers were able to give pupils.
Another parent, Mrs Ngozi Donatus, a provision store owner in Alapere, Ketu, said her children’s school fees had risen from about N140,000 to more than N180,000 per child.
She also said transportation costs increased from N600 to N1,000 after the school relocated, despite her children sometimes sharing the same seat during transportation.
Donatus, who left her previous job because of health challenges and now runs a provision store, said the wider economic situation had also affected her business and made it harder to meet household obligations.
She gave an indication of how rising prices are affecting children’s everyday needs, saying the price of Nutri Milk in her shop had risen from N200 to N300.
According to her, some parents now spend considerable time calculating what they can afford before buying snacks for their children.
In Ojo, however, Mrs Amaka said her children’s private school had not increased its fees for the new session.
She was unable to provide an exact estimate of her spending on school bags, textbooks and other materials, explaining that she was purchasing some items from the market as needed.
Another parent in the area, whose children had moved from private to government school, said the family no longer paid conventional school fees but still incurred other expenses.
She said her children were required to pay N1,000 each for school badges, while other school-related items also attracted costs.
She estimated that she had spent about N700,000 on sandals and notebooks, although she was yet to purchase the children’s textbooks.
The experience was different for Mrs Blessing, a parent living in Adaloko whose four children attend Victoria College in the Jakande area.
Blessing said she had been buying notebooks gradually because she could not afford to purchase all the materials at once.
She has one child in JSS1 and another in Primary 2, among her four children, and said the relocation of the school to Jakande had also increased the family’s daily transportation expenses.
According to her, the children’s transport currently costs about N1,000 daily, comprising N500 to school and N500 back home.
Her account illustrates how transportation can become a significant recurring expense for families with several school-going children, particularly where schools are located far from home.
The financial differences were also reflected in the experience of Mr and Mrs Olamilekan, who recently transferred their child to another school.
They said the new school charged about N25,250 in fees, while textbooks cost approximately N25,000. They estimated their total expenditure for the session at about N85,000 and said they were comfortable with the amount.
In Ikorodu, Emmanuel Miracle Ihebube, owner of AVID Schools and an education consultant, said textbook prices were generally reasonable, although some parents were still unable to purchase all the recommended materials.
He attributed some of the difficulties around textbooks to changes in course names and syllabuses, which he said had made it difficult for publishers to prepare some materials in time.
Ihebube said his school had increased its fees by about 20 per cent, citing the rising cost of operating within the wider community and the increase in the prices of goods and services.
“Some of them could not afford all the necessary textbooks. They just bought some very few important ones,” he said.
Across the interviews, however, one pattern was clear: the cost of returning to school is no longer limited to the headline figure attached to tuition.
For households with multiple children, transportation, textbooks, uniforms, notebooks, feeding and other recurring demands can substantially increase the actual amount required to keep children in school.
The interviews also showed that the burden is not uniform. While some parents reported significant increases in school fees and related expenses, others said their fees remained unchanged or had moved to schools where the total cost was within their means.
For some families, the response has been to buy school materials gradually, while others have reduced the number of items purchased or transferred their children to schools they consider more affordable.
The findings suggest that measuring the cost of school resumption solely through tuition fees may not capture the full financial reality facing families, particularly as parents confront additional expenses throughout the term.
As the new academic session gets underway, the experiences of the families interviewed by The Nigeria Education News show that the real cost of sending a child back to school is increasingly determined not only by what schools charge at the point of admission or resumption, but also by the expenses that continue to accumulate after the fees have been paid.
