The government’s policy of providing free education to South Africa’s poorest children is failing and should be scrapped, argues a newly released report by the Institute for Democracy in South Africa (Idasa).
In his study of government funding policies since 2000, Idasa senior researcher Russell Wildeman said that support for public schools had grown from R4,3-billion in 2006 to R5,7-billion last year. But no-fee schooling for the poorest 40% of children, introduced last year, had worsened the plight of millions of others who were only marginally better off.
Reacting to the report, the education department insisted its system of proportional funding linked to the financial status of schools and learners has been effective. The department is investigating the possibility of expanding the programme to cover a further 20% of learners.
Since 2000, schools have been classified in five quintiles, depending on learners’ economic status. Schools in quintiles one and two teach the poorest.
To counter regional differences in the subsidy system, the department introduced a “national targeting framework” which ranks schools on the basis of educational levels in adjacent communities and “deprivation indices”, including the number of dependants per breadwinner.
Since last year about 14 000 of the poorest schools have been classified “no-fee” institutions, meaning that they receive the highest funding per capita and additional allocations for such services as security, nutrition and classroom construction.
This year, schools in quintiles one and two receive R775 and R711 per learner respectively, while quintile three schools get R581 per learner.
Wildeman’s study highlights major deficiencies in the classification of schools, particularly as provinces have started providing additional funding. “The adoption of supplementary measures has introduced subjectivity into the rankings of schools and destroyed the original intention of a nationwide and objective ranking,” he said.
Compounding the problems is inaccurate information. For example, schools can be pushed from a lower to a higher quintile after being compared with other institutions – not because of improvements in the economic condition of the school or learners. Such schools are then doubly penalised because their poor learners cannot pay the fees.
He said schools also suffer when boundary demarcation changes place schools from one province in to another. “The result is a growing category of poor schools that are excluded from the protections provided by the non-fee policy.”
Wildeman said that in the poorest provinces, Eastern Cape and Limpopo, preferential subsidies for the poorest 40% of children have left half inadequately funded.
He said the government should drop the quintile system and aim to provide free basic education in the next 10 to 15 years. “We need a decent level of funding of all schools. We should give schools the basics and take away excuses for not functioning, while parents should be given the option of topping up with fees.”
Michael Gardiner, senior researcher at the Centre for Education Policy Development, endorsed Wildeman’s call for free basic education, saying a clear programme of action for achieving this would also provide a platform to address the quality of teaching.
But the department’s acting director general, Phillip Benade, said some commentators had described government moves to remedy unequal funding of poor schools as “unprecedented in both its magnitude and the short time during which it was effected”.
“Given that our starting point was in the late 1990s, it is a very significant achievement… it cannot be said that the quintile system has failed – it has been very effective.”
But he said that in the next phase of school financing reform it might be necessary to move to a “simpler or different system, but this will also depend on the availability of funds and the lessons learned as we go forward”.