Section 27 ’ s plan to turn around education crisis
HUMAN rights group, Section 27, has proposed a plan to fix the crisis in basic education. The organisation’s head of education, Advocate Faranaaz Veriava, presented a strategy that would deal with problems facing under-resourced schools. The proposal seeks to address specific areas such as funding and establishing benchmarks for policy- makers to adhere to and to establish a database for needy schools.
She said the current funding model promoted inequality and disadvantaged poor schools. “The current system proposes an 80:20 split for personnel and non-personnel expenditure.
But the public sector is personnel-intensive.
So much money goes into personnel expenditure and very little [is] left for non-personnel items that are needed to run the schools. In Limpopo we worked with schools that don’t have money for chalk or photocopy paper,” Veriava said.
She also urged the government to respect the right to basic education and that it needed to reflect this in policy and planning.
“The right to basic education was treated differently, and given prominence and priority by our constitutional drafters. It’s not qualified by terms such as ‘ progressively realise’ or ‘ available resources’ like other socioeconomic rights such as health, water or housing. “This means that the right must not be realised over time,” Veriava said.
According to her, many shortcomings in the system were caused by the department’s failure to track schools. She said this could be avoided by establishing a database of all schools and their needs.
She also proposed benchmarks and standards for quality education for schools in all areas. “By having these standards then we have something that we can hold those in power accountable to,” Veriava said.
She said poor school management, social ills and poverty made solving challenges in the system very tricky.
“There is no single silver bullet to fix the education system. It’s a complex multifaceted set of factors that influence the system and create the crisis that we are in,” Veriava said.
Basic education department spokesman Elijah Mhlanga welcomed Veriava ’ s suggestions.
He said his department was willing to cooperate.
Mhlanga said there were 12 million pupils in the system and 80% of them came from no-fee paying schools while 9.3million depended on school nutrition. “There is a political will when it comes to education …”
We now know more than we did before basic education was separated from higher education,” Mhlanga said.
“We worked with schools that don’t have money for chalk