allocation for recurrent and capital costs. How personnel costs are going to be reduced without widespread retrenchments is unclear.
NUPSAW (2002b:7) notes that the manner in which schools were classified into the relevant quintiles/deciles was rather unscientific. No in loco inspection was done of schools in order to establish the poverty levels of the school community or the school infrastructure. The basis of the classification was the School Register of Needs compiled in 1996. They note from a survey conducted that some farm schools were placed in quintile 4 alongside some advantaged schools. They add that some dubious criteria were used in the classification of schools such as tiled roofing of the homes surrounding schools in certain areas and the number of parents that had cars in a particular area. They reasoned that the placement of schools in a particular quintile was dictated by economics:
the fewer the schools in quintiles 1, 2 or 3 (the poorest), the less money the education department would have to disburse (NUPSAW 2002b:8).
According to Rademeyer (2004:1), Professor H. Davies of the South African Foundation for Education and Training argues that the financing of schools based on their location and condition of their buildings is no longer a reliable indicator. He stated that the government’s model for allocating funds did not take into account the demographic changes to schools since 1994. Therefore, Davies together with the Federation of School Governing Bodies called for individual learners rather than the school as an institution to be funded.
decentralization and cost saving, a re-emergence of human capital approaches to economic growth, a shift of financial responsibility for education from public to private resources and a growth in the notion of partnerships and volunteerism. The policy framework for schools, however, was only established in 1996 with the promulgation of the South African Schools Act, 84 of 1996.
2.5.1 THE SOUTH AFRICAN SCHOOLS ACT
The enactment of the South African Schools Act heralded a major change in the landscape of school governance in South Africa. Sweeping away the many and varied school categories from the former departments, the South African Schools Act provided for only two types of schools, namely public and independent schools. At the core of the South African Schools Act was the provision for the establishment of statutory School Governing Bodies (SGBs) entrusted with the task of school governance (South Africa 1996c:sec.16). The SGBs were to comprise the principal (ex officio), elected representatives of parents, educators and non-teaching staff and, in secondary schools, learner representatives. The Act further decreed that the number of parent members must comprise one more than the combined total of other members (South Africa 1996c:sec.23). This, according to Fleisch (2002:77), stacked the voting power in favour of the parents.
SGBs were granted considerable powers to manage their own affairs. However, what was abundantly clear in the South African Schools Act was the intention of the state to decentralize school governance. This intention was clearly articulated in the Draft White Paper on Education and Training in South Africa: ‘the Ministry of Education believes strongly that schools must be owned by the communities they serve’ and ‘schools must increasingly come to manage themselves’ (South Africa 1994:50). Steyn and Squelch (1997:1) note that in recent decades there has been a growing trend towards decentralizing the way schools are managed, with calls for more autonomy at the school site. This is in keeping with school governance trends internationally. Levin (1998:132) points out that many countries have taken steps to move more authority to individual schools and to strengthen the role of parents in governing schools. Therefore, Steyn and
Squelch (1997:1) add that in terms of the changes taking place in South Africa as a whole and in education in particular, more emphasis is now being placed on decentralized management. A new concept has thus gained currency in the governance of schools in South Africa – that of self-managing schools.
2.5.2 THE SOUTH AFRICAN SCHOOLS ACT AND PRIVATE FUNDING
An area of serious concern arose in the area of funding in the South African Schools Act.
As Fleisch (2002:78) notes: ‘for its critics, the core of the South African Schools Act was the radical financial provision’. Given the economic policies of the state, it was unwilling to commit huge additional funds to education. Consequently, the only option was to allow parents to supplement the state’s contribution. Weber (2002:285) agrees with Fleisch by stating that in line with the GEAR market forces will determine the provision of education. On the advice of international school finance consultants working for the DNE it was recommended that SGBs be given the right to set and compel (even by processes of law) the collection of school fees based on the consent of the majority of parents in each school. This provision has created a situation where wealthy parents are able to provide better resources for the schools their children attend. Consequently, Weber (2002:285) notes that the quality of a good education is correlative to the price that is paid. Education is thus, fundamentally, reduced to a commodity. Fleisch (2002:80), however, notes quite alarmingly that the notion that most parents would be expected to pay something for their children’s schooling, in some cases a substantial portion of their disposable income, surprisingly with very little opposition became part of the South African Schools Act.
Critics have pointed out that the inevitable consequence of a differentiated school fee structure would mean that some schools could peg school fees at a high level, while poor and working class communities could feasibly expect to levy only extremely modest fees.
This would inevitably lead to the continuation of uneven per capita expenditure. They also point out that this was a departure from the ANC education manifesto that was interpreted by many to mean free education for all (Fleisch 2002:79). Weber (2002:285) adds that a likely outcome is that, in the long run, there will be systematic inequality
between a small number of rich schools for whites and middle class blacks and a majority of poorly resourced schools catering mainly for blacks. He adds that in China the devolution of central funding to local levels, as a part of decentralization of education, has widened disparities between rich and poor regions. Class differences have similarly widened in Russia, Australia and New Zealand.
According to the DNE’s review on public school finance, schools raise an estimated R3.5bn to R5bn a year from fees and other sources, which represents 8-12% of the cost of public schooling (DNE 2003). Bot (2003:34) notes that although schools in poor communities charge relatively low fees, many parents cannot afford these. Therefore, she adds that it is not surprising that since the imposition of school fees, the issue has been contested because it imposes an additional burden on poor parents and contradicts the right to free, compulsory education. The former national Minister of Education, Professor Kader Asmal has agreed that the payment of school fees remained one of the obstacles hindering universal access to education, but emphasized that fees were necessary as government did not have sufficient resources (Bot 2003:34).
Soudien, Jacklin and Hoadley (2001:81) point out that within the context of resource efficiency as a discourse in South African education, baseline levels of provision of personnel, equipment and materials are assumed to exist in terms of which learning and teaching are presumed to be possible. Beyond these baselines, communities and individuals have the right to exercise their individual tastes by resourcing schools above the baseline provision by the state through user fees. Through granting schools the right to set user fees, Soudien, Jacklin and Hoadley (2001:82) argue that the state is instituting financing practices which embody the principles of consumer choice. This, they add has the effect of locating individual schools within a market which differentiates schools according to the degree to which a particular parent body is able to supplement public provision with additional private funding. TLSA (1999b:2) notes that the education policy strategies of the state are promoting privatization, in that, to an ever increasing extent the funding of schools is being shifted onto parents and other stakeholders as part of a general process of the privatization of all aspects of life in South Africa.
In terms of educator provisioning, the Education Laws Amendment Act, 100 of 1997, which amended the South African Schools Act, made provision for schools to appoint educator staff in addition to those employed and paid for by the state. The appointment of such staff, the Act deemed, would be the responsibility of the SGB and would be paid for out of school funds raised by parents (SAIRR 2000:176). Consequently, the NUPSAW (2002a:2) notes that schools located in advantaged communities, which have the financial means, can employ the extra teachers they need. The TLSA (1999a:12) notes that at many schools there was acrimonious debate when SGBs were forced to create ‘SGB posts’. Since the educators paid by the education department were insufficient to meet the needs of schools, SGB’s had to find the money to employ the necessary educators. These SGBs, however, were accused of being agents of privatization. The accusation was that in using school funds to pay for additional educators, SGBs were implicitly condoning the states abdicating its responsibility to pay all the educators a school needs. However, when some SGB’s refused to employ additional educators, they were accused of playing politics while children’s education suffered.
SGBs are increasingly being called upon to hire additional educators owing to the decline in the number of state paid posts allocated to a school. Motala (2002:11) has noted that nationally, the number of state paid educators decreased from 97.1% in 1996 to 91.8% in 2000 and educators paid by school governing bodies increased from 2.9% in 1996 to 8.2% in 2000. Given the high learner-educator ratios prevalent in KZN (see section 2.6.11, page 61), Ramrathan (2002:40) notes that schools are being forced to employ educators through their school budgets to support the number of learners in their schools.
He further notes that employment trends suggest that there will continue to be an increase in demand for privately paid educators as this market begins to increase.
A research study conducted in the Western Cape has shown that schools that can afford to appoint or keep additional educator staff perform better in key subjects such as mathematics. On the other hand, schools that charged school fees of between R0 – R 200, had very few learners taking subjects such as mathematics (Rademeyer 2004).
2.6 DEVELOPMENTS WITH REGARD TO EDUCATOR PROVISIONING