Whether or not the "South African schooling system fails to provide major sections of society with adequate education", as Professor Stefan Schirmer said in a 2010 Centre for Development and Enterprise report, Hidden Assets, one thing is sure: the private sector is providing more options for schooling than before.
However, the quality of this alternate education varies in often unpredictable ways. Parents face harder decisions about where to get the best education for their children.
The latest education statistics report, released by the department of basic education in February, showed that there were more than 12.2-million pupils in ordinary schools (those that do not cater for special needs) in 2010. Of these, almost 500 000 pupils were enrolled in independent, or private, schools. However, experts suspect that more than 4% of South African school-goers use private education.
Schirmer's report mapped every school in six chosen sample areas in rural and urban regions of Gauteng, Limpopo and the Eastern Cape. The aim was to get a realistic picture of low-income private schooling. The report found that "low-fee private schools comprised more than 30% of our total sample – far more than the department of education's national estimate".
In the 15 years preceding the research, the report found, more private schools were established in the research areas than public ones. Other developing countries share this trend. Research by Professor James Tooley from the University of Newcastle in the United Kingdom found that up to 70% of schooling in India, Ghana, Kenya, Pakistan and parts of Latin America was private.
A World Bank report showed that, worldwide, enrolment in private primary schools increased by 58%, whereas enrolment in public primary schools increased by only 10%, said Schirmer.
"The minority of South Africans are being schooled at fantastic private schools and former model C government schools. The rest are being educated in the disaster of our education system," said Ross Hill, principal of Leap 4, a private school in Diepsloot.
"Our education system is ranked lower than poorer countries in Africa and the world," he said. South Africa ranked 133 out of 142 countries for "quality of the educational system" in the 2011-2012 World Competitiveness Report released by the World Economic Forum.
Even though government spending on education has roughly doubled since 1994, "we have inherited a poor education system that does not educate black people and it has become worse despite money being thrown at the problem", said Hill. The weak link, he said, was "implementation".
"We have a great curriculum, but we do not know how to run schools or train teachers."
Low-fee schools are trying to address the need for better training and school management, but juggle between improving the educational offering and keeping fees affordable.
Almost a quarter of the schools researched by Schirmer were not registered, making them technically illegal and unable to access government funding.
Saturday, 08 September 2012
Darul Ihsan Media Desk