About 25 000 public schools opened their doors to 12-million pupils last month, with apparent lack of drama. But this should not lull South Africans into assuming they are in for a quiet school year.
Two time bombs are ticking below the surface: threats by some education bureaucracies against ‘under-performing†schools; and complications that could arise from government moves towards free schooling for poor learners.
Immediately after matric results were released in December, three provinces announced drastic measures against schools that achieved very low pass rates. Gauteng said it would close about 200 schools; North West that principals of such schools would be fired; and the Eastern Cape that some principals would lose performance bonuses.
Gauteng has since had second thoughts; its Education Minister, Angie Motshekga, announced recently that the province could not suddenly find places for about 200 000 pupils cast adrift by school closures. One wonders if someone had a quiet word with her about the steps the Schools Act prescribes in closing a school — which she had apparently overlooked.
The three cases suggest officialdom has run out of ideas. Given the national education department’s estimates of a shortage of 44 700 classrooms, the school closure threat hints at official gung-ho, and even desperation, rather than constructive thought about the complex matter of improving school performance.
It is unclear if the North West and Eastern Cape will act on their threats. But there too, the thinking is sterile. Principals are merely one — albeit important — component of school performance. Much lies beyond their control, including the qualifications of their staff, supply of textbooks, resources the provinces provide and support they receive from district offices.
The noises made by the three provinces should sound alarm bells — the last thing the education system needs is a worsening of tensions between bureaucracies and schools. And, as national Education Minister Naledi Pandor made clear last year, provincial departments need plenty of introspection about their own performances.
But it is the impact of state financing policies on schools, pupils and parents that looks set to dominate the education year. The government will extend the number of ‘no fee†schools to include 40% of pupils this year, and has tightened exemption policies for the 60% at schools that charge fees.
These welcome moves are still in their infancy, but there are signs that they could entrench the most worrying gap in the education system — between the rich and the poor.
There is little or no monitoring of implementation of the fee- exemption policy, so we do not know whether better-off schools are becoming less accessible to poorer pupils. The vast majority of pupils attend poorly resourced schools, and it is there that one would expect the no-fee policy to have most effect.
Yet some educationists have questioned whether these schools will be better off financially. Will the money they receive from the provinces in lieu of fees exceed their previous fee income, even though this was low and many parents could not pay anyway?
Another twist to the complexities of education financing concerns high-performing, well-resourced schools. Many of these pay from their own resources for extra teachers, reducing class numbers.
But because there is no policy to compensate schools for fees exemptions they grant, those who take seriously the goals of access and equity, and admit large numbers of pupils exempted from fees, risk reducing their own resources and effectiveness. South Africa cannot afford to damage the few quality schools we have.
Overall, we have seen a smooth launch to the school year, without cost-related problems that have plagued the system. There are — as yet — no reports of pupils illegally excluded from schools for non- payment of fees.
But 2007 will be the year in which we can start to assess whether the government’s funding policies are making significant inroads into the inequities inherited from apartheid.