Weekend Argus (Saturday Edition)
Time for equality summit
AS an alum of Westerford High School, I was exposed to educational excellence that has laid strong foundations for my career as a lawyer and education specialist. During my time, we had vigorous debates on fees and unequal access to quality education. One conscious decision was to ban international tours. Sometimes, those pushing to keep fees low were side-lined as “antiexcellence” when decisions were made to make significant infrastructural investments (that invariable push up fees for maintenance of those assets).
More than 10 years later, I imagine that the debates at school governing body level have continued and decisions to invest in more infrastructure have also continued.
Recently, I learn that Westerford now has up to five international tours annually, has its own AstroTurf and has decided to invest millions of rand in a musical centre. I ask: What are the moral and legal obligations of our excellent public schools in the South African context?
South Africa is the most unequal country in the world and the level of quality schooling that most children can access when they enter public schools is constitutionally unacceptable. The level of education provided acts as a barrier to upward mobility as it fails to equip children with necessary skills to participate, grow and excel in society. Significant strides have been made to improve the education system but ensuring minimum standards of quality continues to evade us as a country.
Westerford is a public school, and remains a centre of excellence and boasts it is the “school that never sleeps”. The decisions that Westerford has made around AstroTurf, international tours and now a musical centre, create a moral problem.
Every choice a school like Westerford makes has larger consequences for our society as a whole. It adds more and more barriers and hurdles for what it would take for a child from disadvantaged circumstances to access quality education as one often sees a hike in fees associated with large-scale infrastructure development.
All public centres of excellence ought to be committed to racial and socio-economic diversity. This is a constitutional imperative and public institutions have an obligation to promote access to equality in the decisions and choices they make about investing in public resources. At the least, they should not be exacerbating inequalities just because they have been allowed to generate their own funds. The types of choices that display such a commitment would include:
Having more disadvantaged learners attend a school like Westerford.
Having bigger classroom sizes.
Building a hostel so disadvantaged learners can access Westerford and live close to the school.
If Westerford were to make such decisions, that would mean it would have less money to spend on AstroTurf, music centres, and maintaining these investments (including maintenance of the existing infrastructure). These are trade-offs that would have to be made.
The infrastructural investments Westerford has chosen to make are all things that appear to promote educational excellence but such decisions contribute
1) to furthering inequality of resources in respect of public institutions and
2) mean Westerford cannot do more to address problems of inequality.
They have made decisions to privilege elitist educational opportunities over and above choices that would show a commitment to equality and racial and socioeconomic diversity. The same is true of almost all former model-C primary and secondary schools.
Below are fees for many of previous model-C schools in the Western Cape. Many exclude ICT, general schooling and in some cases “voluntary donation fees”:
Rustenberg High R49 900
Rondebosch Boys’ High R49 000
Wynberg Boys’ High R42 800
SACS High R41 850
Westerford High R37 420
Wynberg Girls’ High R33 900
Pinelands High R32 340 San Souci High R31 945
Bergvliet High R27 965
According to Old Mutual, these fees are set to increase above inflation by about 9% per year (‘South African private schools that are cheaper than public schools in 2018”, Business Tech, May14).
When critiqued about fees, these schools will say they receive minimal funding from the government and this is what justifies them. The implication is they are financially constrained and need to have high fees and small classes to maintain excellence.
But in reality, the elite southern suburb schools are in a regressive competition to “out infrastructure” each other in an attempt to constantly be “better”. This is a regressive type of competition as it makes these institutions more elite, more expensive and more exclusive.
Evidence is getting stronger that small classes are not key to better education, more children accessing effective teachers is (Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation research).
Another response is that they are making decisions in the best interests of their constituents. Given feeder area policies and increasing property values surrounding these schools, they are arguably even more elitist than before. The constituencies these schools respond to cannot just be the wealthy southern suburbs. That cannot be the purpose of this public infrastructure in South Africa today.
Malcolm Gladwell, in a podcast entitled Food Fight, makes the point, albeit in the context of tertiary education in the US, that it is not enough for the Westerfords of the world to change how they make their decisions. They exist in a connected eco-system where parents have chosen to send their child to Westerford over and above Rondebosch, for example.
In a hypothetical world where Westerford has chosen to build a hostel and rapidly expand access to disadvantaged learners, it will have to continue to attract parents willing to continue to pay high fees to sustain academic excellence and subsidise disadvantaged learners. Such parents will need to purposefully choose to send their child to a school that prioritises this, instead of paying the same amount to send their child to a school with a new music centre.
The decisions these schools make, have a network effect. To break the cycle of this regressive competition, we need all these schools to change meaningfully together.
Creating a more equal society requires a deep commitment to make choices, with real trade-offs, by all privileged parents and schools. It is a moral and legal imperative to do so to ensure a more prosperous country for all. We need to dedicate resources and optimally use our existing resources in pursuit of equality. This needs to be done urgently.
As alumni, we call on our schools to be trailblazers in pursuit of equality and educational excellence. We want our schools to achieve their full potential and contribute in the enormous way we believe they can to making South Africa more equal.
We call on our schools to have an equality summit; we need to create a new social contract that makes it clear what the purpose of these schools are, given our context.