Some school pages on clarvyn.ai say "Fees on request". Some say "From GHS 1,500 per term". Some say nothing about fees at all. None of those is a mistake, and none of them is Clarvyn's choice. Each is a decision the school made, and each tells a parent something different.
The three choices
When a head fills in the school's profile, one field is called Show fees as, and it has three options.
- Not stated. The page says nothing about fees. There is no row, no "not provided" label, no blank. This is the default.
- On request. The page says "Fees on request".
- Published range. The school enters a starting amount and a currency, and the page says "From" that figure "per term". A school cannot pick this option without both the amount and the currency; the form refuses to save a range with either missing.
The form says, beside the field, what this is: what you choose to publish, not your invoices, which stay private. The fee position on a public page and the invoice a family receives are two different things, and only the first one is on the page.
Why a school is allowed to say nothing
It would be simpler for parents if every school had to publish a fee table. We chose not to require it, for three reasons.
First, a single number is often wrong. Fees differ by class, by boarding, by whether the child eats at school, by sibling discounts and by scholarships. A school that must print one figure prints the wrong one for most families, and a parent who arrives holding a printout of it starts the conversation on a misunderstanding.
Second, fees move. A school that raises its fees in September and forgets the page has now published a number it cannot honour. A page that says "on request" is never out of date.
Third, some schools want the conversation. A school that adjusts fees to a family's circumstances would rather meet the family than have them decide from a figure on a stranger's screen. That is a legitimate way to run a school, and the directory should not punish it.
So a school can stay silent, and silence carries no penalty. Nothing in the directory sorts or filters by fees. A school that publishes a range does not rise above one that does not, and a parent cannot narrow the list to schools under a certain figure. Fees were left out of the filters on purpose. A filter is only as good as the numbers behind it, and a directory where many schools have said nothing would filter those schools out of sight for a choice we told them was fine to make.
What each choice tells you as a parent
Not stated means exactly that. Do not read it as expensive or as cheap. Many schools never reach that field, and a school that fills in everything else and leaves fees blank has usually decided fees are a conversation. Ask.
On request is an invitation. The school is saying it will tell you when you ask. The quickest way to ask is from the school's page in the Clarvyn parent app, where the button says Ask a question. The school answers from its own console, and the reply comes back to you in the app. Every question a school receives this way comes from a signed-in parent, which is why schools answer them.
Published range gives you a floor. "From GHS 1,500 per term" means the lowest fee the school charges for a term is around that figure, in the school's own currency. Your child's class, boarding, feeding and anything else on top can raise it. Treat it as the number that tells you whether to visit, not the number you will be invoiced.
What stays private
Once your child is at a school on Clarvyn, what you are actually billed appears in the parent app, under your child, on the Fees tab: each invoice, what it is for, what has been paid and what is outstanding. That is between you and the school. It is never on the public page, and no other parent can see it.
A published range is a school's opening sentence, not its terms. The rest of the conversation is yours to have.