Quality education for whom?

Where you go to school matters. It may matter more in South Africa than any other country in the world for which we have comparable data.

The Gauteng Department of Education (GDE) is attempting to disrupt Apartheid-era inequality in our schools – where a small minority of learners received a superior education based on an arbitrary factor of race or class.

Compared to the 44 other countries that participated in the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) assessment in 2009, South African recorded by far the highest inequalities between schools’ learning outcomes. The PIRLS research report, titled, “The importance of socio‐economic status in determining educational achievement in South Africa,” found that the socio-economic status of one’s school may be more important than family background in determining one’s educational outcomes. The immense transformational potential carried by schools, however, is lost: “South African education is an institution by which existing patterns are being reproduced.”

The findings are consistent with those of Marisa Coetzee, who in 2014 compared the educational achievement of disadvantaged Grade 3 learners attending different tier schools. She found “a year’s worth of learning differences between black children in former black schools and black children in former white schools,” even when household income and ability were controlled for.

As government works to improve the standard of low-income schools, it must expand access to better-resourced schools that offer education of a far higher standard.

In the past few years the GDE has taken control of placing learners in schools, allowing parents to rank three options but ultimately placing learners in such a way that “takes into account the needs of the broader community in which the school is located.” With the introduction of that system, wealthy parents’ social capital immediately took on a lesser significance in determining their child’s educational prospects, as they are now no longer able to able to apply individually to a school.

Then, in July this year, the GDE proposed further amendments to provincial admission regulations. Among other things, feeder zones - the geographical area from which a school admits learners – will be determined by a broader set of factors than before. Currently the sole criterion for determining a feeder zone  is whether or not a learner’s place of residence, or one of her parents’ place of work, is within a 5km radius of the school. According to the new policy, the Head of Department will have to take into account all relevant information, including:

(a) the capacity of the school and schools in the vicinity to accommodate learners;
(b) the language and curricula offered at the school and the schools in the vicinity;
(c) information and projections regarding area population density, learner population density and learner enrolment; and
(d) the need for geographical and spatial transformation.

In addition to whether or not a learner’s place of residence, or one of her parents’ place of work, falls within the school’s feeder zone, schools will also need to prioritise learners whose place of residence is within a 30km radius from the school.

In her op-ed “Equal(ly bad) education for everyone” (Politicsweb, 29 October), Sarah Gon argues that the GDE should leave the minority of high-performing, fee-charging public schools alone, and focus instead on bringing the rest of the schools up to standard. But Gon’s argument fails to articulate just how unequal per pupil funding is between schools with low-income student bodies and schools with high-income student bodies, and in doing so misrepresents the stakes of the argument.

As I will illustrate, the difference is so great that even the most efficient governance on the part of the GDE could not bring poorer schools up to the standard of schools with high-income student bodies, so long as school funding models stay the same. The province simply can’t afford it.

Recognising the role that parent contribution will continue to play in ensuring adequate-quality education in South Africa, it is essential that we spread the comparatively wealthy parents of school-going children among a greater pool of schools. While it has its faults, the GDE’s proposed amendments to learner admissions policies will do just that, and will enhance equity and quality as a whole for Gauteng schools in the process. These changes must happen in parallel with aggressive efforts to improve low-performing schools.

South African public schools are divided in five Quintiles – categories that reflect the socio-economic status of the school. Quintile 1 to 3 schools are schools in low-income areas, and are generally characterised by poor infrastructure and low educational outcomes. Quintile 4 and 5 schools are schools in better resourced areas and are largely characterised by far better educational outcomes. Quintile 1 to 3 schools are not allowed to charge school fees, but receive a higher subsidy from the government than Quintile 4 and 5 schools. Quintile 4 and 5 schools are allowed to charge fees, as high as they want, but are technically not allowed to exclude any qualifying learner based on her inability to pay fees. In Gauteng 53.3% of schools are Quintile 4 and 5 schools, second only to Western Cape.

Between 70% and 80% of the provincial spending on education is spent on salaries, but this spending is not affected by the Quintile of a school, meaning that wealthier schools receive the same number of teachers as poorer schools.  The remaining 20% of education spending, spent on non-personnel costs, is distributed according to Quintile, with lower Quintiles receiving more money.

In 2018, a Quintile 1 to 3 school received R1,243 per pupil, while a Quintile 4 school received R623 and a Quintile 5 school received only R215 per pupil. These values increase slightly each year, but provincial education departments already struggle to foot the bill. It is unlikely that the amounts will increase significantly any time soon.

The difference of R1,028 between funding to Quintile 1 to 3 schools and Quintile 5 schools is significant, but it pales in comparison to the extra income received from the school fees that Quintile 4 and 5 schools collect.

The table below shows this difference. I model a school of 800 learners and an annual school fee of R5000 and R25,000 for our model Quintile 4 and 5 schools, respectively.

Table 1: The difference in annual income received by Quintile 1-3 schools and Quintile 4 and 5 schools

As you can see, the Quintile 1 to 3 schools are left with an R987, 200 annual income. With this money they must fund any extra staff (teachers, cleaning staff, after care), security, infrastructure maintenance, operational costs, consumables, events and extracurricular outings and a host of other items. It is no wonder that most Quintile 1 to 3 schools cannot afford to hire additional teachers, keeping their pupil to teacher ratio high.

In contrast, the Quintile 4 and 5 schools in our example charge R5,000 and R25,000 per annum in school fees, respectively. Assuming they collect only 80% of fees, giving the remaining 20% of learners exemptions, they will earn R3,7 million and R16 million respectively. Provincial governments sometimes reimburse 4 and 5 schools for those learners who don’t pay fees, but I have not included that income here. Even with only 80% of fees collected, the Quintile 4 and 5 schools in our example earn between 4 and 16 times what a Quintile 1 to 3 school earns. The difference is astonishing. Gon herself explains that at a typical Quintile 5 school the government non-personnel contribution is “often less than 2% of the budget.”

Gon claims that “if non-fee paying pupils exceed 25% to 30%, it becomes increasingly difficult for paying parents to afford the school fees necessary to maintain a school.” But even if only 50 % of learners paid fees in our model above, and fees remained the same, our Quintile 4 school would have 2.5 times as much money to spend annually than our Quintile 1 to 3 schools. At R10 million, our Quintile 5 school would still have ten times more to spend! If it costs over R10 million per year to maintain a school, what are we to tell the other half of schools that must operate with less than R1 million annually?

Crucially, Quintile 4 and 5 schools benefit in a host of ways beyond annual income from school fees. Wealthier parents add capacity in areas such as financial management, and fundraising. Quintile 4 and 5 schools also benefit from institutional capacity that comes from decades of operational experience. New schools, and schools that under Apartheid were severely underfunded, do not have the same institutional memory nor the supportive network of alumni.

So long as school funding models remain intact, school Quintiles will continue to play a major role in determining school quality. The GDE’s reforms to admissions policies mean that parents from comparatively wealthy homes, living in comparatively wealthy neighbourhoods, will not be able to reserve access to the historically high-performing school in their neighbourhood for their children exclusively.

If their child is admitted to that school, the demographic of the student body is likely to be significantly different than what they had anticipated. Some, no doubt, will flee to private schools. Others will, we hope, do what parents with means tend to do at their children’s schools: Invest time and energy into ensuring the quality of education provided is of an adequate standard.

South Africa is one of the few countries in the world to allow public schools to charge fees. Rather than normalising the inequality that this funding model entrenches, let us try imagine a radical redistribution of funding going to education - both government funding and private funding through school fees - so that spending per learner at all South African schools becomes more equal. Let us begin to worry about the standard of education for our country, not just for our children.

The GDE’s proposed amendments to schools admissions policies are a step in the right direction, but in order for them to succeed they require a brave commitment from all parents to equality in our education system, and in our country more broadly. Exclusive and exclusionary thinking, like that underlying Gon’s argument, has no place in the education system of the new South Africa.