Education in the red
W HEN South Africa became a democracy, one of the first tasks was to improve education for our poorest citizens.
We adopted a pro-poor education policy, where schools in the poorest areas received more funding than schools in the richer areas.
It was called the quintile system (because there were five categories).
It quickly became apparent that apartheid had done its work with such devastation that five categories were not really needed.
Schools in quintiles 1, 2 and 3 were all in need of higher funding, so in 2010 the policy makers combined them and made all of them no-fee-paying schools.
They received a government grant per pupil that was 10 times higher than schools in quintile 5 areas.
It was a key policy move that meant most parents in South Africa did not have to pay school fees.
Only schools in quintile 4 and 5 areas were allowed to charge school fees.
Although this went some way to helping address the needs of schools in poorer areas, it could not solve the overwhelming disparities enforced by apartheid.
Parents, desperate for some kind of hope for their children, spent whatever they had to send their children to schools in richer areas.
This meant that many schools in quintile 4 and 5 areas found themselves with a majority of pupils whose parents were from the first three quintiles.
These parents struggled to pay the school fees and the schools struggled with the additional educational needs of these pupils.
Now, many quintile 4 and 5 schools face the problem that they are not receiving school fees from poorer parents, but they are also not receiving much of a subsidy from the government (because they are located in richer areas).
It is possible for these schools to claim the school fees back from the government, if it can be shown that the parents are unemployed, but this is a cumbersome and unwieldy set-up.
The de-facto reality is that we do not have a quintile system in anything but name.
Rather, we have a minority of fee-charging schools and a majority of schools that are no-fee-paying schools.
Why does the government not move to consolidate this reality and make all schools in poor areas, or schools with a majority of poor parents, no-fee schools?
Simply, because it does not have the budget to do so.
The number of pupils in no-fees schools has already increased from 5 million in 2007 to 9 million in 2015. That is a 70% increase.
More than 1 000 schools have been reclassified from quintile 4 and 5, to quintile 3, and become no-fees schools.
This means the government has been increasingly picking up costs that were being covered by parents and now does not have the money to continue picking up the tab.
Nor will it have the money in the foreseeable future to do so.
The downgrade and stagnant economy, about to go into recession, means that less money will be around for government spending on the poor.
Either the government will have to reduce the amount of funding it provides to all no-fee schools or it will have to allow for an increase in fee-paying schools.
Either way, South Africa’s already highly unequal education sector is about to come under pressures that will make it more unequal, not less.
Those who can afford to buy a better education for their children will do so and those who can’t will increasingly find themselves in an underfunded system that warehouses rather than educates.
The apartheid legacy was never going to go quietly into the night, but now the night will be extended.
Good education policies that have consistently pushed for, and extended, support for poor parents and communities in South Africa have reached their limit.
What road we take from here is uncertain, but it is clear that no matter what the road, it will be harder.