What is the Price of Education?
A Look at the Inefficacy of School Fee Policy on Kennedy Road
Saren Stiegel
Fazal Khan, University of KwaZulu-Natal
School for International Training
South Africa: Reconciliation and Development
Spring 2006
We are so poor, but we don’t know that we are so poor.
There is no access to knowledge...
They don’t know that the policies don’t apply to us. The people in Pretoria are
too high to learn about the experience of the informal settlements.
-S’bu Zikode
What we have said is that we understand your economic plight is low but
we make an appeal to them to give something to our school fees. Because at
the end of the day, if all the learners apply for an exemption from school fees,
whatever subsidy we get from the department is not going to allow us to
run the school in terms of telephones and so on. So we need to make an appeal,
that we know your economic plight is bad but if you want your children to
get quality then obviously you have to pay. Someone has to pay for it.
- A.K. Maharash, Principal of Palmeit Primary
Saren: Is there anything else you want to say about school fees?
“Can I ask, if you can, how can I get help?”
-Jabulani Zungu
Initially when we had the first democratic elections,
one of the pledges was free education for all,
and free housing all, and free this for all and free that for all.
But the government has realized that it cannot fulfill all its promises.
So as a result you have got the masses, who are uneducated.
They heard "free" and now they expect "free."
-A. Bhairoparsad, Principal of Clareville Primary
The Principal told us, “If he takes my baby, all mommies will send babies
without money.”
-Zandile Nxumalo (Translated by Lungile)
Table of Contents
I. Acknowledgements4
II. Abstract4
III. Introduction5
IV. Glossary of Terms7
V. Background and Literature Review9
a. A Brief History of User-fees9
i. The Policy Development Framework9
ii. The Funding Formula15
iii. Critiques and assumptions18
a. Constitutionality of Funding System20
b. Government responses and amendments 21
VI.Methodology25
VII. Limitations of Study26
VIII. Findings and Analysis27
a. Attempting to frame the Kennedy Road experience27
i. Knowledge of the Policies28
ii. Payment Capabilities29
ii. Responses of the Children31
b. Specific School Policy in a Poor Community33
i. Beliefs of parent's financial abilities 36
d. How to Proceed38
IX. Conclusions40
X. Recommendations42
XI. Bibliographies43
a. Bibliography of Interviews43
b. Bibliography Written Sources44
XII. Appendices45
1. Resource Targeting Table 45
2. Calculations for Exemptions 47
3. Survey Instruments48
4. Transcribed Personal Interviews50
5. Letter Templates for Workshop67
Acknowledgements
I am forever in appreciation to the members of the Kennedy Road community for welcoming me into the community and allowing me to speak with them. I am indebted to M’du Hlongwa for helping me with transport and translation and introducing me to Lungile Mgube. Through her translation, Lungile provided an abundance of information in this text. She also escorted me to Palmeit and Burnwood. For all that she did, I cannot thank her enough. Zama Ndlozu was more than helpful in escorting me to the police station, translating the flyers and translating during the workshop. The welcomeness and warmth I received from these friends, as well as S’bu Zikode and Nonhlanhla Mzobe, was more than I can ever repay.
I am also extremely thankful for the administration at Burnwood, Palmeit, Clareville, and Rippon for being forthcoming with information and time. To Salim Vally, for listening and responding to ideas and questions and providing me with invaluable information, I am truly grateful. To Vanessa Nichol-Peters, thank you for putting in valuable time to read my unwieldy draft. And to Gretchen Young, thank you for helping me sort out ideas and progress. I would also like to thank my advisor, Fazel Khan, for facilitating my introduction to M’du.
Abstract
This year, 2006, many years into the new dispensation, the country is still struggling with racial and class tensions and inequalities. The education structure is situated squarely within this context. Despite having policies specifically in place to allow fee exemptions, the pressure to pay school fees has become extremely burdensome to poor black parents and the learners. Education and access to education can be extremely pivotal in empowering change in communities. Yet, situating access to basic schooling within a financial framework unattainable for some demonstrates an illicit strategy to entrench the poor.
This paper is a case-study of parents and learners in the Kennedy Road settlement that are struggling with the current policies. I will lay out the education development framework and the exemption policies that are intended to provide a transformative education system, contextualizing the situation of school fees and parents financial abilities. Through interviews with the local schools and members of the imijondolo (shack-dweller) community, I will analyze the access to education. Attempting to frame the experiences from Kennedy Road, exploring the local school policies, and questioning how to proceed, will demonstrate how social justice and economic inequalities in relation to education are being dealt with in South Africa. This paper finds that despite the ANC’s utopian pronouncements of democratic participation and attempt to redress inequality, education policy set against these efforts of social justice and economic equality. The school-fee policies, aimed at transformation, are only perpetuating the inequality issues and un-democratic society the ANC declared they would eradicate. Abolishing the fee system and increasing government allocation to all schools in need is the only way to assure pressure is taken off poor parents and children.
Introduction
When the new democratic government came into power in 1994, it was given the daunting task of addressing the deep inequalities and social backlogs apartheid left in its wake. In education, the learning disparities amongst racial groups, including the facilities and the resources, were immense. Necessary declarations of rights to basic education were part and parcel of the new ANC human rights’ agenda. In the negotiations into the post-Apartheid school reparations, a funding model was made to equalize school funding, urge integration, and parent participation. Despite amendments made to the legislation and funding structure, the current system for school funding is heavily dependent upon parents paying school fees. Alongside the user-fee structure, the government set forth exemption policies in order to ease the financial burdens of poorer parents.
This year, 2006, many years into the new dispensation, the country is still struggling with racial and class inequalities. The education structure is situated squarely within this context. Despite the policies for fee exemptions, for the poor black parents and the learners pressure to pay school fees is extremely burdensome. Education and access to education can be extremely pivotal in empowering change in communities. Yet, by situating access to basic schooling within an exclusive financial framework demonstrates an illicit strategy entrenching the poor.
Some critics of the government argue that the difficulty of poor parents to pay fees exemplifies that the macroeconomic strategies of educational funding are perpetuating education inequalities. In order to explore this, I will begin by giving the development of the policy framework, a brief history of the user-fee policies, highlights of the current policies, reviewing some social and human rights’ theory and its violations. This background contextualizes the responses by Kennedy Road parents, learners, and schools administrators, and frames their struggles within a theoretical perspective.
Much has been written and critiqued during the years of the transition, working towards a more equalized system of educational access. Still, little has been changed with regards to the grassroots relationships and plights of the poor. The imijondolo, or shack-dwellers, of Kennedy Road are amongst the poor that are plagued with the burden of school fees. The majority of children in the community attend one of two primary schools, Palmeit and Clareville Primaries, and one secondary school, Burnwood Secondary. This paper centers on educational access of Kennedy Road children and their parents who deal with the financial burdens of school fee policy.
My objectives in this project are twofold. At the macro level, I look to understand the policies, laws, and affirmative rights, how they are taking effect, and to what extent the efforts for social justice and transformation are being approached. How does a society shape its laws and policies to rebuild and sustain its people? Then at a more micro level, I explore the individual struggles of poor parents and what schools are doing or not doing to accommodate to their rights. I hope to show from the perspective of the parents, the extent to which funding policies and corresponding exemptions are in sufficient in making the admission process correspond to the fundamental right to education. Through interviews and a focus-group workshop I was able look into the situation of the Kennedy Road parents-- what fees do they pay, do they receive any assistance, their relationship with the principals, etc. I look at the ways in which educational policy addresses the difficulties of poverty and I examine the policies and opinions set forth by the schools—how have the Principals shaped their policies, what kind of access do they provide to the parents to participate, etc. Thus, the body of this paper will begin by framing the Kennedy Road experience, the responses of parents to fees and responses of the children, then will explain the specific school policy from the perspectives of poor community members and the beliefs of parent's financial abilities, and end by discussing how to proceed with these conflicting struggles.
Glossary of Terms
It is necessary to grasp the following concepts to understand the rest of this paper:
Adequacy Benchmark: Designates the minimally sufficient cost to satisfy an individual learner’s right to
education. For 2006, this amount is R527.
Annual General Meeting (AGMs) : The parent, community, and administrators meeting where budgets
are made and corresponding fees and exemption policies are set.
GEAR and RDP: ANC’s macroeconomic strategies that determine the federal and provincial
responsibilities and monetary allocations for education.
Fee Exemption: The policies that allow parents to be full, partially, or conditionally absolved from
paying fees.Parents are fully exempt if their annual gross income is less than 10 times the annual school fees; they are partially exempt is the income is less than 30 times but more than 10 times the fee. *** There should be automatic exemption should be granted if the learner’s parent is receiving a pension or welfare grant.
Medium Term Expenditure Framework (MTEF): Sets the national budgetary guidelines and allocations
for the provincial departments of education.
Ministerial Review of the Financing, Resourcing and Costs of Education in Public Schools (Review):
The 2002 report on the school-funding regimen.
Model C Schools: As part of the negotiating process, parents were asked to choose between three
models, Models A, B, and C, of integration and school funding. Model A schools would have
made schools completely private, receiving 45 percent subsidy phased over three years. A vote
for Model B schools would have retained the public status, but could admit black students up to 50 percent, maximum, of the enrollment. This is the same as the Model C school. What is different is a vote for the Model C school would have created the so-called ‘state-aided’ school. Seventy-five percent of the budgets for these schools would have been received through state funding, making the remaining 25 percent the responsibility of parents and donors. The majority of parent bodies in white schools voted for the state, or “status quo” schools budget. Yet, government negotiations in 1992 required the status-quo schools and the Model B schools to convert to the Model C structure.
Norms and Standards of School Funding (Norms and Standards): National policies that give regulations for the provincial departments to guide school governance.
Plan of Action for Improving Access to Free and Quality Basic Education (Plan of Action):
Sets out the changes that need to be made to SASA and the Norms and Standards.
Parents: This includes both parents and guardians of learners, including grandparents and caretakers of
orphans.
School Governing Bodies (SBGs): The governing body of a school comprised of the principal, bursar,
parents, and community members.
South African Schools Act 1996 (SASA): For the purposes of this paper, the significant sections
of the Constitution include Section 29 (1)(a), the basic right to education. The policy asserts that no child should be refuse admission whether or not their parent has paid the user-fees. It establishes that the SBGs have the authority to determine the budget, the fees, and the exemption policies. This allows the SBG to determine whether or not the parent qualifies. Also, Section 39 of SASA designates that schools should set fees when the majority of parents at the meeting.
User-fees: Used interchangeably with school-fees, these are the parent-paid fees demanded by the school in accordance with the Norms and Standards.
Background and Literature Review
Brief History of the Practice of User Fees
The Policy Development Framework
In the ANC’s Restoration and Development Program (RDP), the policy framework that included the initial strategies for education and training, visions of redressing apartheid legacies were vividly articulated. The goals were targeted at bringing people out of poverty through an integrated program based on the people’s needs. A preview of the education rights came as the description that “all individuals should have access to education and training irrespective of race, class, gender, creed or age.”[1] The documents cite the state to have “central responsibility in the provision of education and training.”[2] These were the 1994 proclamations that were to frame the education to suit the people.
In his essay “People’s Education for People’s Power,” Bobby Soobraryan explains this slogan that captured the stage and location of the education struggle emerging from the apartheid inequality. For the majority of South African’s, the apartheid educational structures were not only blatantly unequal, but also a system meant to perpetuate the submission of blacks into a socio-economic formation based on oppression, exploitation, poverty, social dislocation and powerlessness. Soobraryan notes that “education is always in the interests of those who are in control...Under Nationalist control education was used to further subservience and oppression. Whereas in the hands of the people, it becomes a weapon for liberation.”[3] People’s Education was a democratic initiative and should be judged according to the reception within the ambitions of South Africa’s majority.
In the initiative of democracy the National Education Crisis Committee (NECC) was created, instituting the research centers in the University of Natal and Witwatersand. Under the NECC, the guidelines of the People’s Education highlight education and politics as “inextricably linked in a manner that the transformation of education should occur within the context of social transformation.”[4] After the repressive instruments of apartheid education, this ‘transformation,’ a nebulous concept for nation-building, must be understood as the restructuring of societal and the economical policy and law in which lives of the poor can be rebuilt and fostered to redress deep-seeded inequity.
After 1994, policy changes occurred, compromising between state and market resources, public and private schooling, and the character of decentralization. In “The South African State in Transition,” Oldfield outlines the role of the state and society in reconfiguring education in a developmental state. She illustrates the complex and dynamic definitions and goals of the apartheid state, transition state, and post-apartheid state. The debates of governance, decentralization, fiscal austerity, and governance hindered on the question of “what degree a ‘facilitative’ or minimalist state can change the stark structural inequalities that lie at the heart of the South African developmental crisis.”[5] Oldfield argues to address South Africa as a developmental state that is neither centrist nor minimalist. Instead, the developmental state should strategically utilize private funding and civil society to serve the whole population of South Africa, addressing the imbalances, inequalities, and economic efforts. The difficulty lies in building the centralized/ decentralized strategy to address the goals of democracy while redressing apartheid inequalities.
Karlsson, Mcpherson, Pampallis highlight that “three of the most commonly stated goals of the post-1994 reforms in education governance have been those of increasing democratic participation in decision making, creating an equitable system of education and improving the quality of education provision.”[6] Prior to 1994, the education system had fifteen different education ministries--one for each of the ten bantustans, one for each of the four officially recognized race groups outside of the bantustans (African, white, coloured, and Indian), and one responsible for the Department of National Education whose task was to set the national norms and standards. This was in fact a decentralized system with each department having its own model, funding formula, and governance, department and parent relationships. Decentralization, or the shift in power to the provinces and the schools, is thought to be a facilitator of democratic objectives; it allows decisions to be made within the people’s reach and power is distributed out of what could be a tyrannical location. At the same time, in the transition the undertaking of the provincial departments of education was the organization of a single provincial system out of the former racially and ethnically based departments that had operated in their territories.[7]