The government’s financing policies for school education promote equity in theory, but funding is regressive in practice. And “a basic lack of respect for human rights is … widespread [in school education], in particular regarding the rights of the poor”.
These are the central findings of the government’s Review of the Financing, Resourcing and Costs of Education in Public Schools, which Minister of Education Kader Asmal instituted last year and released in the first week of March.
But the review’s analysis of government spending on schools is flawed, and its proposed remedies inadequate, some major stakeholders say.
“Despite our remarkable successes at improving quality, access and equity — over an extremely short period since 1994,” Asmal said. “I found it unacceptable that some learners were still attending schools that were inadequately resourced, that some poor parents were carrying an inordinately high financial burden because of high education costs, that many non-poor parents and, especially, lower-middle-class parents were making financial contributions toward the schooling of their children that were difficult to explain on educational grounds.”
Noting an average annual growth of 1,3% a year in education expenditure since 1994, the review nevertheless finds extensive evidence of continuing inequities in school financing: there are up to 20% differences in spending per learner across provinces, for example. The report recommends equal spending on all learners, wherever they are.
A further key recommendation is the creation of an education monitoring and support office to improve the government’s budget analysis, bolster provincial education departments and monitor pro-poor funding, said education deputy director general Bobby Soobrayan, who headed the department’s review.
The review also recommends further research on, and intervention in, a wide range of chronically problematic issues, such as school feeding schemes, transport expenses, school uniforms and exclusions based on non-payment of fees.
But such recommendations and analysis focus merely on non-personnel expenditure, which is only 5% to 10% of education spending, say the South African Democratic Teachers’ Union (Sadtu) and the Education Rights Project (ERP), both of which have been highlighting continuing inequalities in education practice over a lengthy period.
“This is not the comprehensive review of educational funding that we had been looking forward to,” says Thulas Nxesi, Sadtu’s general secretary. “The report is largely silent on post provisioning — personnel expenditure — which accounts for 90% of the budget. This has major implications for redress and equity in the system — these principles are fundamental pillars of our transformation project.”
In this respect, “the report is downright misleading”, Nxesi says.
“The impression conveyed is that the progressive redistributive principles of the funding norms have now been transported into the post provisioning system. The truth is less dramatic: for the first time this year, provinces are required to budget 2% to 5% of posts for redress — most opted for 2%.”
The post provisioning system is “the ultimate sunset clause”, Nxesi says. It has maintained “the status quo inherited in 1994 … We have fostered a pseudo-private system within the public schooling system. The major difference between the ex-Model C [well-resourced] schools and the private education sector is that the former receive massive state subsidy.
“Either the ministerial review deliberately draws a veil over this reality, or the education department is in denial.”
But personnel expenditure “is where we have been most successful in equally distributing that 90%”, Soobrayan told the Mail & Guardian. “There is total equality in this. And next year the redress funding will be phased in more strongly.”
For the ERP, the review “does not change the status quo concerning exclusions and cost-related problems”, says Brian Ramadiro, a researcher in Wits University’s Education Policy Unit. “It also does not accord with international norms, protocols and declarations on free education, such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.”
The review’s emphasis is on “operational efficiency within prescribed policy”, the ERP’s Stuart Wilson says.
“The ERP supports that efficiency. But the report is soaked in managerialism … Its narrow economistic approach does not address the needs on the ground.”
The ERP and Sadtu both take strong exception to the report’s handling of school fees, in particular its finding that 85% of parents “find school fees reasonable”.
“Apart from the purported popularity of fees among parents,” Nxesi says, “the authors of the report provide the following argument for their retention: that it is patronising to poor parents to withdraw their right to pay fees which in turn secures their right to involvement in the resourcing issues of the school. We have our doubts that the struggle of the past — for people’s education — has come down to this: the right to pay fees for unequal education.”
Soobrayan says this is “a gross misunderstanding. The report says poor schools must be funded adequately so that parents don’t have to pay fees. You can’t ban parents from paying fees.”