Parents at Flipper International School are pushing back against a proposed 60% tuition increase, accusing the administration of coercive decision-making and unfairly linking the fee hike to efforts to keep the school’s Lancha campus open.

The dispute intensified during a meeting held late last weekend, when guardians from the Summit campus and other branches said they were presented with a choice they described as “take it or leave it”: accept the increase or face the immediate closure of the Lancha, or Beklo Bet, campus. Parents said the process was legally flawed, emotionally coercive and designed to force approval through pressure rather than consultation.

According to several parents, the proposed increase is not limited to the headline 60%. They said it is being combined with a separate “harmonization” adjustment meant to narrow gaps between tuition levels across grades, pushing some families’ total costs far higher. One Summit campus parent told Capital that some households could face total increases of more than 120%, with annual fees rising from around 60,000 Birr to more than 130,000 Birr.

Parents said the school offered three options at the meeting: “harmonization only,” “harmonization plus 40%,” and “harmonization plus 60%.” They said the last option was strongly favored by the administration, even though many families viewed it as unaffordable and unjustified.

“We are not talking about a few thousand Birr,” one father said. He accused the school of presenting the rise as necessary for teacher salaries and facility improvements, while failing to deliver on earlier promises. Parents cited an earlier pledge to spend $1 million on a computer lab, saying they have yet to see the promised equipment.

The school’s move has also raised procedural concerns. Under Ethiopia’s education directives, schools are required to notify parents about tuition changes three months before the end of the academic year, submit detailed justifications, secure the agreement of the Parent-Teacher Committee and obtain support from at least 51% of parents before approaching the relevant authority. Tuition is also expected to be payable in at least three consecutive installments.

Parents say those requirements were not followed. They complained that the administration declared the majority had agreed, despite nearly 200 parents walking out in protest. They also said Lancha campus parents were effectively forced to approve the hike out of fear that their campus would otherwise be shut down, and that the resulting decision is now being imposed on families at other campuses.

The financial impact, parents said, is severe. Once the proposed increase is combined with existing harmonization charges, some families could see tuition rise by 110% to 120%. Parents argue that asking for such increases while previous commitments remain unfulfilled has destroyed trust between families and management.

Summit campus parents have reportedly refused to sign the agreement and have formally raised the matter with the Education and Training Authority. They said the authority has assured them it will intervene if the school is found to have acted outside the rules. Some parents are also preparing to take the matter to court if the school does not enter into fair negotiations and provide quality assurances.

In written notices sent to parents, the school indicated it intends to proceed with the new fee structure. Capital submitted questions to school management, but no response was received by the time of publication.

Ethiopia’s digital payments ecosystem has made notable progress, but a new survey shows that payment gateways and merchant payment channels are still constrained by weak infrastructure, limited business-account use and a heavy reliance on personal accounts rather than merchant-focused payment tools. The findings suggest that the problem is no longer simply whether digital payments exist, but whether they work well enough for merchants to use them at scale.

The April 2026 Digital Merchant Payments Ecosystem Observatory: Ethiopia Wave 1 Flagship Report says 58.8 percent of micro-enterprises accept digital payments, while 41.2 percent remain cash-only. But the report also finds that the sector is sharply divided between urban and rural areas, with adoption far higher in cities than in the countryside, where connectivity and infrastructure remain major barriers.

One of the biggest problems is that Ethiopia’s merchant payments are still flowing through personal accounts instead of business accounts. The report says fewer than 1 percent of mobile banking or mobile money users rely on merchant or business accounts as their primary payment-receiving channel, leaving transaction data largely invisible to credit providers and regulators.

That gap is important because the country’s merchant economy is already generating significant digital activity. The report says 44.5 percent of micro-enterprises would benefit from additional credit or capital, but only 10.8 percent borrowed in the previous six months, with most relying on family and friends rather than formal digital finance.

The study also points to onboarding bottlenecks. For mobile banking, 92.7 percent of merchants signed up by visiting a bank branch or agent office, while mobile money users also relied heavily on in-person onboarding. The report says that model is a barrier for micro-enterprises that operate six or seven days a week and cannot easily leave their businesses to open an account.

According to the survey, merchant awareness of digital payment services is still driven mainly by bank and agent representatives, while social media plays only a small role. That suggests payment gateways are not yet benefiting from the kind of digital discovery and merchant promotion that could broaden adoption more quickly.

The report says Ethiopia’s recent payments reforms, including the National Digital Payments Strategy Phase Two, the interoperable QR mandate and EthioPay-IPS, provide a stronger policy foundation. But it adds that these tools have not yet reached enough merchants to transform usage patterns, meaning the country is still in the early stages of building a truly merchant-driven digital payment market.

The findings point to a clear challenge for Ethiopia’s payment gateway providers: adoption alone is not enough. Unless merchants are onboarded more easily, business accounts become more useful and infrastructure improves outside major cities, digital payments may remain widespread in name but underused in practice.