Free for all?

Section 29 Education
(1) Everyone has the right -
(a) to a basic education, including adult basic education; and
(b) to further education, which the state, through reasonable measures, must make progressively available and accessible.

We have a problem!

The government considers a pass mark to be 35% and even with that sickenly-low rate the Matric pass rate for 2009 at government schools was 60.7%. Compounding this shockingly low rate is that of all the students who start government school only 46% of them finish (WET, Corene de and WOLHUTER, Charl. A transitiological study of some South African educational issues.) That basically means that of all the 18 year olds in our country this year only about 30% of them have a matric certificate.

Private schools (IEB) are doing well in South Africa and the pass rate was 97.42%. While this sounds good, only 8052 students wrote the IEB exams. Compare this to the 580 577 government schools students and private schools amount to about 1.4% of matrics in the country

So who is to blame for this dire problem and how do we fix it?

There are a myriad of factors such as lack of resources, poorly qualified teachers and lack of discipline but for me there are two main factors:

Under the Apartheid regime South Africa had 17 different education boards. Every 'homeland' had their own board and then each race group had a board of their own. Each different race group got allocated different funds according to their status in South Africa; in 1993 whites were allocated almost 4 times the amount allocated to blacks. The government took it so far as to have a completely different education syllabus for black people, this was known as Bantu Education. The thinking being that black people need not be educated higher than their station in life. So the majority of our population has generations of people who received little or no education.


The second issue is that Apartheid government was a white government whose population was in the vast minority. The only way they could hold onto power was to create a system whereby people never challenged the system in place. One of the main ways that the National Party government did this was to use the education system. While children of all races were taught in schools never to question authority and to do as they were told.

The results of these above two issues is generations of people who don't see the benefit of an education, and if they do, they are not well educated enough themselves to be able to assist their children.

So what is the solution?

Well throwing money at it surely is not; according to the Star Newspaper (dated 12 February 2010) the Education department has spent a TRILLION RAND on education since 1994. If money is not spent wisely, and on sustainable solutions, then money may as well be poured down the drain.

The answer is that people need to value their education and the truth is that a tangible impact on their pocket seems to be one of the greatest motivators of our time. If we want to correct the disaster that is our education system we need to ban no-fee schools and start insisting that parents or guardians pay school fees. No matter how small the charge every single person who goes to school should pay for it. This would foster a sense of value in their education as well as put funds directly where they are needed, the school itself, and not into lining politicians pockets.

South Africa has a well-documented unemployement and poverty problem and this needs to be taken into consideration as some families simply would not be able to pay even the most meagre fees. There is a way around this though:

In 2006 the World Bank did comprehensive research into education in Third-World countries and one the most fascinating things I discovered from the research was something called conditional cash transfer
programs (CCTs). Essentially what this system pertains is the payment of social grants to poor families once they comply with certain conditions such as school attendance and regular health check ups. Countries such as Brazil and Mexico have found great success with these CCTs. There are up to 12 million people in South Africa on social grants and I think something similar to the CCTs should be implemented for people who cannot afford school fees.

Whatever the final solution is, I strongly believe that we need to start fostering a culture of valuing education otherwise we run the risk of perpetuating the injustices from the past, and in my opinion the best way to start to value education is to place a monetary value on it. In two or three generations the culture may be so entrenched that we can remove the fees, but until then drastic intervention is needed.



References

WET, Corene de and WOLHUTER, Charl. A transitiological study of some South African educational issuesS. Afr. j. educ. [online]. 2009, vol.29, n.3 [cited 2010-04-17], pp. 359-376 . Available from: http://www.scielo.org.za/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0256-01002009000300005&lng=en&nrm=iso"