The Vision for a better education system for all
As a legacy of apartheid, public schools in South Africa are divided into two distinct ‘quality humps’. The big hump encompasses poor quality schools – almost all historically black. The small hump shows good quality schools – almost all formerly white. While the overall quality of education has improved somewhat, patterns of inequality have not shifted since 1994. With the growth of the private schooling sector, there is a risk that our education system will become even more polarised, with wealthier families opting for private education and poorer ones having to make do with the inferior education provided at many public schools.
The problem we’re trying to solve:
too many children do not yet receive high-quality education and therefore cannot participate fully in learning and in life
We must work towards high quality education in all government schools. But despite government channeling millions towards poorer schools, it is not sufficient to overcome the massive gaps in teaching quality and learner outcomes. A key factor often overlooked is that poorer township and rural schools do not have as much social capital as wealthier schools. Principals in better-off schools don’t work on their own. Their school governing bodies (SGB) constitute professional ‘pit crews’ to support them and they’re tapped into extensive resource networks. Yet poorer schools are expected to perform with just enough money for the staff and limited learner support materials. Their school SGBs generally lack financial and legal expertise and, despite the determination of parents, most don’t have enough knowledge of the curriculum to hold teachers to account.
To support government’s efforts, private donors have spent billions trying to bolster education by funding non-profit organisations (NPOs) to work in public schools. The impact of that effort has been very limited. One of the main reasons for this is that NPOs operate in schools, but outside of the government system. Furthermore, they are often implemented in an indifferent and inflexible school environment, where the staff’s expectation of their own performance is poor. There are huge allocative and operational inefficiencies in the national education system. South Africa spends over 6% of its GDP on education – among the highest in the world – and achieves among the poorest outcomes.
Public school partnerships represent a new opportunity. The National Development Plan calls for all sectors of society to work together to find new solutions.
Public school partnerships bring additional expertise, resources, flexibility and greater accountability in school management into no-fee public schools in a bid to achieve greater equity in quality education in South Africa.
The partnerships can improve the quality of service offered at government schools that serve vulnerable communities by drawing on non-profit school operating partners (NPOs) to:
- Strengthening the leadership and management flexibility at the school;
- Harnessing strong managerial resources from the non-profit sector to support operations at the school; and
- Embedding a robust accountability framework so that government is able to track the performance of the school.
