Racial representivity among teaching staff is lacking in most Gauteng public schools. And close to half of formerly whites-only schools have less than 20% black learner enrolment, probably because of language and fees policies at these schools.
At the same time, deracialisation in schools is increasing – but not in former Department of Education and Training (DET: black-only) schools. There is also still a perceived hierarchy of privilege and quality that situates former DET schools at the bottom, followed by ex-House of Representatives (HOR: coloured) and ex-House of Delegates (HOD: Indian) schools, with former Transvaal Education Department (TED: white-only) schools seen to occupy pole position.
‘When the provincial picture is analysed, it appears that the educator force is racially representative,” writes Mohammad Sujee, an analyst in the Gauteng Department of Education’s chief directorate of education financing, planning and monitoring. But when the data is broken down by school and learner representivity, among other variables, ‘then it is evident that there is little or no deracialisation of the educator staff in some of the public ordinary schools”.
Sujee’s analysis of school migration and demography in Gauteng appears in the latest edition of the Quarterly Review of Education & Training in South Africa, a publication of Wits University’s Education Policy Unit.
In 40% of former TED schools, less than 20% of the learners are black, Sujee writes, and 11 schools have no black learners at all. In this large complement of schools, ‘very little deracialisation of learners is taking place and this could be due to factors, such as language policy and school fee structures”.
There are 1 432 schools – 75% of the total – that have higher than 80% black enrolment, Sujee observes, and of these 101 are
ex-TED schools. Here, ‘where there is a majority of black learners, one finds that the majority of the educators are white”. There are 40 schools, for example – 8% of the ex-TED schools – in which more than 90% of the teachers are white, while their black learners exceed 80%.
‘It is therefore evident that there is a limited amount of deracialisation and that racial representivity in the staff composition is lacking in most schools,” Sujee says.
The study challenges the perception that deracialisation of schools means that learners are vacating townships, so that the number of learners in townships is decreasing. Noting that migration from one school to another is difficult to monitor, Sujee writes: ‘The movement of learners from township schools to suburban schools has been debated and will continue to be debated.”
But ‘learner enrolment numbers in township schools have not decreased but rather increased over the years”. The enforcement of the South African Schools Act (1996) has resulted in an increase of black learners in Gauteng from 69% in 1996 to 72% in 2000. And when learners move out of township schools, ‘these vacated seats are being filled by other learners who have come into these areas from outlying and rural areas”.
Indian and coloured learners show the greatest migration from one category of school to another: they have moved from their respective ex-departments to former TED schools and independent schools. There has been an especially sharp decrease of Indian learners in ex-HOD schools: 78% enrolment in 1996 to under 50% in 2000.
And white learners in independent schools increased from 8% in 1996 to 13,6% in 2000. But more than 86% of all white learners are still in the public ordinary school sector, Sujee notes.
This analysis relies only on quantitative data, Sujee concludes. ‘The concept of deracialisation requires further research into the attitudes, friendships and group dynamics within schools so as to get the real sense of whether deracialisation is taking place or not.”