SCHOOL FEES

Issues in Education Policy Number 3

John Pampallis

Centre for Education Policy Development

School Fees

John Pampallis

Issues in Education Policy

Number 3

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Centre for Education Policy Development

Published by Centre for Education Policy Development (CEPD)PO Box 31892Braamfontein 2017JohannesburgSouth Africa

Tel: +27 11 403-6131Fax: +27 11 403-1130

Copyright © CEPD 2008

ISBN: 978-0-9814095-5-9

Series editor: John Pampallis

Typesetting and design by Mad Cow Studio

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of thispublication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in anyform or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without priorwritten permission of both the copyright holder and the publishers of the book.

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Preface 4Abbreviations and Acronyms 5

Introduction 7Why were School Fees Introduced? 8School Fee Exemptions 11Effects of School-fee Policies 13

Some successes 13Problems for poorer schools 14Some problems with exemptions 16

Policy Adjustments 17National quintiles 18No-fee schools 18Implementation of the no-fee-schools policy 21School fees in former Model C schools 22

School Fees and Equity 24

Further Reading 27

Contents

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The series Issues in Education Policy consists of a number of booklets on keyissues in education and training policy in South Africa. Each booklet dealswith one such issue and aims to give the reader, in plain English, an overviewof the topic and its implications for various stakeholders.

The intended readership includes a wide range of people with an interest inthe education and training system – members of Parliament or of provinciallegislatures, teachers, trade unionists, employers, student and communityactivists, education department officials, journalists, governors ofeducational institutions, members of local or provincial education andtraining councils, and interested members of the general public.

Each booklet gives an outline of the issue that it deals with, explains itsimportance and why it is contentious or divisive (where that is the case). Itsummarises current policy and its development – for example, why certainpolicies were made in the first place and under what circumstances, what theexperience of implementing the policies has been, what their supporters anddetractors have to say about them, and the main findings of research andpolicy evaluations. There is also a list of further reading.

After having read this booklet, readers should have a basic understanding ofthe topic. They should be able to understand more complex material on theissue, participate in public debates and assess new policy initiatives.

Preface

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Abbreviat ions and Acronyms

AAC All African ConventionANC African National CongressANCYL African National Congress Youth LeagueCAD Coloured Affairs DepartmentCEPD Centre for Education Policy DevelopmentCOSAS Congress of South African StudentsDET Department of Education and TrainingEPC Education Policy ConsortiumGCE Global Campaign for EducationHSRC Human Sciences Research CouncilNECC National Education Co-ordinating Committee [formerly

National Education Crisis Committee]NGO Non-governmental organisationSADTU South African Democratic Teachers UnionSFAI School Fees Abolition InitiativeSGB School Governing BodyYCL Young Communist League

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Introduct ion

The issue of schools fees is still a difficult one in South Africa. After nearly adecade and a half of African National Congress (ANC) government, calls forfree school education continue to be made by leaders of the ANC and itsallied organisations.

A little over a month before Jacob Zuma’s election as ANC President, one ofhis advisors said that the introduction of free school education was one ofMr Zuma’s policy imperatives. Kgalema Motlanthe, the ANC’s SecretaryGeneral at the time, had earlier also raised the possibility of a change inpolicy for the movement, to include a call for universal and free compulsoryeducation. These statements followed (and were followed by) calls for freeschooling from organisations such as the ANC Youth League (ANCYL), theYoung Communist League (YCL), the Congress of South African Students(COSAS) and the South African Democratic Teachers Union (SADTU). Inher 2007 budget speech, Minister of Education Naledi Pandor (2007) stated,

The time may have arrived for South Africa to offer all children free primary education

in law. This would place us in step with modern democracies worldwide.

These calls for free school education have a long history. As early as 1943,this demand was voiced by the ANC in a document titled “African Claims inSouth Africa”. This was echoed by others in the broad liberation movementsuch as the All African Convention (AAC) and the National Anti-CAD intheir “Draft Declaration of Unity”. In 1955, the Congress of the Peopleadopted this demand in the Freedom Charter which stated, “Education shallbe free, compulsory, universal and equal for all children”. This call was maderepeatedly by all sections of the liberation movement from then on – andparticularly from the time of the 1976 student uprisings and throughout thestruggles led by the National Education Co-ordinating Committee (NECC)in the 1980s and early 1990s. The call for free and compulsory education wasalso made by many liberals outside of the liberation movement.

Today, the South African Constitution gives all South Africans the right tobasic education, including adult basic education. However, the Constitutiondoes not state that basic education must be free for learners.

The support for free and compulsory school education reflects internationaltrends. For example, free schooling is one of the main aims of the GlobalCampaign for Education (GCE), an international non-governmentalorganisation (NGO), and the World Bank and Unicef have established theSchool Fees Abolition Initiative (SFAI).

Given this background, it was hardly surprising that the ANC’s nationalpolicy conference in Polokwane in December 2007 passed a resolution toextend free education. The resolution noted that:

We are at the beginning of a long journey to a truly united, democratic and prosperousSouth Africa, in which the value of all citizens is measured by their humanity, withoutregard to race, gender, sexual orientation and social status. … [Despite some progress,]

many … households and communities remain trapped in poverty (ANC, 2007).

The resolution then recommends that South Africa should progressivelyintroduce free education for the poor [emphasis added] up to undergraduatelevel and that the number of no-fee schools be extended from the poorest40% of schools to the poorest 60%.

Some obvious questions spring to mind here: Why has a democratic SouthAfrica not provided free schooling for all up to now? And why, even at thisstage, is the ANC and the government that it leads still not committed to freeeducation for all in the near future? To understand this, it is necessary toexamine the history of school fee policy since 1994.

Why were School Fees Introduced?

The most fundamental piece of legislation shaping the post-apartheidschool system is the South African Schools Act of 1996. In the lengthydebates leading to the adoption of the Act, the issue of funding was probablythe most difficult for the ANC to come to terms with. This was largelybecause of the difficulty in reconciling the movement’s decades-long aims ofequity and quality education with the constraint of insufficient statefunding.

The more privileged sectors of the schooling system (mainly the previouslywhite and to a lesser extent the previously Indian and coloured schools)

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were relatively small, but they received a disproportionately high level ofstate funding. According to the Hunter Committee’s Report of theCommittee toReview the Organisation, Governance and Funding of Schools in1995, at the end of the apartheid era white learners comprisedapproximately 9.5% of all learners in the country, coloureds learners 7.6%,Indian learners 2.4% and African learners 80.5%. Per leaner expenditurewas R5 403 for whites, R3 691 for coloureds and R4 687 for Indians. ForAfricans in the Bantustans it ranged from R1 053 in the Transkei to R2 241in QwaQwa. For Africans in non-Bantustan areas, per learner expenditurewas R2 184.

The changed political environment meant that the new democratic state wascommitted to equality and redress of past racist discrimination. It was clearthat state resources had to be distributed more fairly. At a minimum thiswould require equalising the distribution of resources; this would need to befollowed by skewing the distribution of state resources in favour of the poor.

The Hunter Committee estimated that if funding were equalised for allschools at the 1994 level of the former white schools, the education budgetwould have to more than double from R25.6 billion to R62.4 billion. Thiswould result in education taking up over a third of total governmentspending. On the other hand, equalising expenditure at the lower level of theDepartment of Education and Training (DET) schools – that is, Africanschools in non-Bantustan areas – would result in a saving in governmentspending of only R431 million.

It was unlikely that state expenditure on schools would increasesubstantially, given the many other demands on the national budget and thegovernment’s adoption of economic policies that emphasised theimportance of reducing the deficit. This meant that there was unlikely to beany significant improvement in the resources available to the schools thatserved the African majority. At the same time, this scenario of decreasedfunding would have a substantial impact on those schools which had servedonly white learners in the past but which were now starting to admit a smallbut growing number of black learners.

This reality led policy developers to start looking for ways to use non-statefunds for public education. It was argued by the more privileged social

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groupings, largely represented by the National Party and other oppositionparties, as well as by some within the broad democratic movement, thatschool fees would bring private resources into the school system. This wouldfree government to channel state resources to those schools in greatest need.The ANC thus began to consider compromising (at least in the short term)its decades-old policy that education should be free, compulsory, universaland equal for all children.

As Blade Nzimande and Sue Mathieson (2004:9) put it:

The compromise that was being accepted within the Ministry, the Department and theANC more broadly was to focus state expenditure on disadvantaged schools andcommunities, while schools with wealthier parents would be enabled to maintain thequality of their schools by collecting school fees.

Nzimande was the chairperson of the ANC Education Study Group and theParliamentary Portfolio Committee on Education from 1994 to 1999, whileMathieson was a researcher attached to the Study Group.

After a vigorous public debate both in and out of Parliament, the SouthAfrican Schools Act became law.1 It adopted a system that allowed schoolgoverning bodies (SGBs) to determine school fees which all parents wouldbe compelled to pay, as long as the majority of parents had consented to thefees.

The rationale for this system had been set out in the second White Paper oneducation in 1996 – The Organisation, Governance and Funding of SchoolsThe argument went like this: The government could not afford to fund themiddle-class (mainly former white) schools at the same level as before. Itwas likely that the cut in funding at these schools would cause the quality ofschooling to fall if no other source of funding was available. This wouldprobably result in middle-class parents removing their children from thepublic school system and placing them in independent (private) schools. Intime this would deprive public schooling of its most influential advocates asbusiness people, professionals, politicians, senior public servants and eventeachers would no longer depend on public schools for the education oftheir own children and grandchildren. This would be to the detriment of the

1 More information about this process, and about the resulting contents of the South African Schools Act, can be foundin School Governance by Tsakani Chaka, another booklet in the Issues in Education Policy series.

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whole public school system, and the only way to avoid it would be to allowparents to supplement state funding for their own schools. Therefore, schoolgoverning bodies in public schools should be allowed (but not compelled)to charge a school fee and to determine its amount.

There was another factor which was not widely discussed but which nodoubt existed in the minds of many. This was that the former whites-onlyModel C schools, together with a relatively small number of private schools,played an important role in producing the best-performing matriculantsand university entrants. If the funding to these schools was decreaseddrastically, there was a danger that it might have a negative impact on SouthAfrica’s ability to produce high-level skills. Also left largely unstated was thefact that most of those who made or influenced policy probably had theirown children or grandchildren in the former Model C schools, and wouldmost likely not want to jeopardise the quality of education offered there.

School Fee Exemptions

For the reasons discussed above, the South African Schools Act indicatedthat all school governing bodies were expected to supplement state funds inorder to improve the education that their schools offered. This could bedone either through school fees or other forms of fundraising. SGBs couldset school fees, as long as these fees were approved at a meeting of theparents. Once approved, school fees become compulsory and all parents atthe school were obliged to pay them, unless they applied for and weregranted an exemption. The Act made it clear that children could not beremoved from a school if parents did not pay the fees, nor could they bedenied admission to the school on the basis that their parents could notafford to pay fees.

There was clearly an expectation in the minds of the legislators who passedthe South African Schools Act that schools serving wealthier communitieswould charge fees but that the schools serving the poor would not.

In 1998 the Department of Education published its Norms and Standards forSchool Funding. This document attempted to establish funding procedureswhich promoted equity and redress within the context of inadequategovernment funds and of increasing reliance by many schools on fee income

to supplement state funding. The Norms and Standards deals, among otherthings, with government funding of public schools and the exemption ofparents who are unable to pay school fees

These regulations required provincial education departments to divide allpublic schools in their provinces into five categories (or quintiles), based ontheir physical condition and on the wealth of the surrounding areas. Fornon-personnel and non-capital expenditure2 – for example, books andstationery, copying, water, electricity, telephones, security and maintenancecosts – the poorest 20% of schools would get the highest levels of publicfunding (35% of the resources allocated for all schools by the provincialdepartment), the next poorest would get somewhat less, and so on. Theallocation for all quintiles is shown in Table 1.

TTaabbllee 11.. FFuunnddiinngg aallllooccaattiioonnss bbyy qquuiinnttiillee

The Norms and Standards recognised that some parents at a school mighthave difficulty in paying the fees agreed to by the majority of parents. Itprovided for this by exempting certain categories of parents from payingfees. Parents were exempt if their combined annual gross income was lessthan ten times the annual fees per learner. If the combined annual grossincome of parents was less than thirty times but greater than ten times theannual school fee per learner, the parents could apply to the school forpartial exemption (to be granted at the discretion of the school governingbody). If the combined annual gross income exceeded thirty times the

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SScchhooooll qquuiinnttiilleess EExxppeennddiittuurree aallllooccaattiioonn((%% ooff rreessoouurrcceess))

Poorest 20% 35

Next 20% 25

Next 20% 20

Next 20% 15

Least poor 20% 5

Adapted from Norms and Standards for School Funding.

2 Capital expenditure on new schools or additional classrooms and facilities was to be based on a ranking ofgeographical areas from the neediest to the least needy, with backlogs being eliminated by prioritising the most needyareas. Personnel expenditure was to be based on the actual staff employed by the Department and allocated accordingto personnel provisioning norms and the agreements on salaries reached in negotiations between the Department andthe unions.

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annual school fee per learner, the parents did not qualify for any exemption.Parents had to apply to the school governing body for fee exemption. Ifparents failed to apply and did not pay the full school fee, the governingbody could take legal action to recover the fees from parents.

Effects of School-fee Pol ic ies

Some successes

The new policies tended to be successful as far as the wealthier schools wereconcerned. Most of these schools had previously been restricted to whitestudents – that is, they were former Model C schools. They becameincreasingly racially integrated but retained their middle-class character.They have absorbed children of the emerging black middle class (African,coloured and Indian), as well as a limited number of children from poorerblack families. The schools provided the children with educationalopportunities which were generally not available in formerly black schoolsin townships and rural areas, where schools were struggling to overcome theburdens of their historical legacy and poor resource base. Students comingout of these well-off schools are likely to provide a disproportionate numberof first-year enrolments at universities, and probably an even moredisproportionate number of graduates.

In the context of drastically diminished state funding, fee income has beenused by the more affluent schools to supplement funding received from thestate. The formerly all-white schools were able to continue offering arelatively high level of educational quality because school fees providedthem with the means to do so.. Fee income is used for a wide variety ofpurposes depending on the school’s needs and priorities – for example, newbuildings, maintenance of buildings and grounds, teaching and learningmaterials, library books and equipment, equipment for sports and culturalactivities, and so on.

School fees are also used to employ teachers and other staff additional tothose provided by the state. In some of the wealthier schools, up to half ofthe teaching staff and an even greater proportion of administrative andmaintenance staff is employed by the governing body, largely through theuse of income from school fees. In addition schools can, with the permission

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of the head of the provincial education department, use their fee income tosupplement the salaries of teachers who are employed by the state – forexample, those who are particularly valuable to the school or who performextra duties such as supervising extracurricular activities. This assists theschools to retain the services of valuable members of staff who mightotherwise be lost to private schools (which can offer higher salaries) or leavethe teaching profession altogether.

The policy of allowing schools to charge fees also stemmed a significantmove of the middle classes out of the public school system; private schoolstoday cater for less than 5% of all learners. This is precisely one of the mainaims of the policy, and to this extent it must be judged to have beensuccessful.

Problems for poorer schools

Despite the redistribution of state funding towards the poorer schools inline with the Norms and Standards for School Funding, the level of fundingfor poorer schools in both urban and rural areas has remained low. Theyoften found themselves with insufficient funds to meet their day-to-dayrequirements for such things as cleaning materials and basic maintenancecosts, or for much-needed additional teaching and learning materials.Because of this situation, school management tended to encouragegoverning bodies and parents to provide additional funding by chargingschool fees. The result was that very few schools in the country did notcharge any school fees. For example, a study conducted by the HumanSciences Research Council (HSRC) and the Education Policy Consortium3

(EPC) for the Nelson Mandela Foundation in poor rural areas of theEastern Cape, KwaZulu-Natal and Limpopo found that 98% of schoolscharged fees.

Although schools in poor communities tended to have very low fees – feesof R100 or less per year were not uncommon – they still proved to beburdensome for many parents. The Nelson Mandela Foundation reportreferred to above – Emerging Voices: A Report on Education in South African

3 The Education Policy Consortium consists of the Centre for Education Policy Development and the education policy

units at the Universities of the Witwatersrand, KwaZulu-Natal, Fort Hare and Western Cape.

Rural Communities – talks about schools that mostly charged fees of R100 orless:

School fees and uniforms are a major cost for the families of significant numbers oflearners. More than this, they inflict pain and humiliation on those unable to pay.Some children explained how fees were the focal point of tensions that are brought tobear on them. Children explained to researchers that they are criticised at school fornot paying their fees, take this criticism home, and are then confronted by parentsunable to pay who feel attacked and disrespected. School fees can make children of verypoor families feel welcome neither at school or at home (Nelson Mandela Foundation,2005:51).

The study goes on to discuss the measures that some schools and teacherstook to ensure that fees were paid:

Failure to pay school fees means that a child can be sent home, kept outside of class,not be given books and stationery, be excluded from examinations and using schoolfacilities, have his or her report card withheld and be made to repeat the class (NelsonMandela Foundation, 2005:53).

These types of penalties are all, of course, illegal and most people wouldprobably agree that they are particularly brutal when enforced on peopleliving in serious poverty. But they are nonetheless real and the product of asystem which allows schools to charge fees while not funding themadequately. The situation is made worse by the fact that many parents andtheir children are ignorant of the law and do not know how to enforce theirrights. It appears that school principals and governing bodies, with a seriousshortage of resources to accomplish the tasks that are expected of them, havefound it relatively simple to convince parent bodies to agree to set fees.Then, given the difficulties of getting the necessary resources out of a distantprovincial education department, they turn the pressure on softer targets –the parents. This has invariably hurt the most vulnerable among the parentsand children.

Another problem associated with the school funding policy had to do withthe quintiles into which schools were divided. These were provincialquintiles – that is, each province created its own quintiles and divided its listof schools into those quintiles. On a national scale, however, this createdsome strangely unfair situations. A school in a wealthy province likeGauteng or Western Cape could be put into quintile 1 and benefit from the

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resulting additional funding. An equally poor school in a poor provincesuch as Eastern Cape or Limpopo could find itself classified in quintile 2 oreven quintile 3 because of the large number of even poorer schools in thoseprovinces; as a result it would get less funding than its counterpart in thericher province.

Difficulties such as these gave rise and added urgency to the calls for freeeducation described at the beginning of this booklet. The Department ofEducation became aware of the problems soon after introducing the Normsand Standards for School Funding, and started a process of tackling them.The measures taken are discussed below in the section on policyadjustments.

Some problems with exemptions

A different problem was associated with the issue of exemption of certainparents from the payment of school fees. Although the school feeexemptions policy laid out in the Norms and Standards for School Fundingapply to all schools, it is mainly associated with schools in the higherquintiles – that is, schools in wealthier communities which tend to chargerelatively high fees. In a poorer school with fees of, say, R100 per year,parents would only be totally exempt from paying fees if their combinedfamily income was less than R1 000 per year. Any family receiving socialgrants would have an income above this, even though they could still beliving in severe poverty. In any case, it would be difficult for most very poor,and largely uneducated, parents to provide documentary evidence of a verylow income.

In better-off communities, fees could be set by governing bodies (with theapproval of most of the parents) at much higher levels than in poorercommunities. In 2007, for example, fees of R12 000 or more were notunusual in many former Model C secondary schools – although many didcharge less than this. Since there was significant demand to attend theseschools from people who could not afford the fees, exemptions quicklybecame an issue in most of the former Model C schools and in some otherschools (particularly some of the former Indian and coloured schools).People applying for fee exemptions included both people living in theschools’ surrounding catchment area as well as those who commuted from

distant suburbs and townships.

A number of problems arose with the exemptions policy. Many parents didnot know that they qualified for an exemption, or did not have theinformation required to apply for an exemption. Schools were not legallyrequired to inform the parents of these things and usually did not do so, asit was in the school’s interest to ensure that as many parents as possible paidthe fees. There was also a tendency among schools to attempt to screenapplicants and to accept only those who appeared likely to pay their fees. Inaddition, schools sometimes charged a high registration fee to new learnerswho applied for admission, thus excluding many poorer children. Also, theexemption policy did not cater for multiple children – that is, incomerequirements were the same no matter whether parents had one child orseveral children attending school.

Despite the possibility of getting an exemption, there were many complaintsthat schools fees were too high, even though the parents themselves set thelevel of fees. This was probably because many parents did not attend theannual parent meetings at which fees were set, or because parent minoritiesat particular schools did not agree with the fee levels set by the majority.

Pol icy Adjustments

The government’s most comprehensive study of the costs of schooling so far– the Review of Financing, Resourcing and Costs of Education in Public Schools– was published in 2003. The report examined many aspects of schoolfinance, including the following:

• the national and provincial administration of school funding;• the development, preservation and maintenance of school infrastructure

and equipment;• non-fee costs of schooling, such as the cost of school uniforms and

transport; • the school nutrition programme; and • the issue of school fees and fee exemptions.

This booklet deals only with the last one – school fees and exemptions.

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The Review acknowledged that state funding to poor schools wasinadequate, and that there was a need to eliminate fees (and therefore theneed for exemptions) in poor schools so as to relieve the burden on poorparents and children. It also recognised that funding to schools was unfairbecause the provincial quintiles did not take into account the differentwealth levels in the various provinces. This meant, as mentioned above, thatschools in identical circumstances but in different provinces were fundeddifferently, with schools in the wealthier provinces getting more than thosein poorer provinces. Furthermore, the Review recognised the need to adjustthe policy on fee exemptions in “non-poor” schools in order to offer greaterprotection to poor households.

The government has responded in a number of ways to these problems. Tworesulting policy documents are the Amended Norms and Standards for SchoolFunding and the Regulations Relating to the Exemption of Parents for Paymentof School Fees in Public Schools, both published in 2006.

National quintiles

Among other things, these changes meant that schools would be placed innational rather than provincial quintiles. This would ensure that schoolswhich were equally poor would be treated approximately equally withregard to state funding, no matter which province they were in. This meant,of course, that a larger proportion of the schools in poorer provinces wereplaced in the lower quintiles than schools in wealthier provinces.

No-fee schools

The Amended Norms and Standards also provided for the Minister ofEducation to declare certain categories of schools to be “no-fee schools”.These would naturally be the poorest schools (measured by the socio-economic circumstances of the surrounding community). They would notbe allowed to levy compulsory school fees.

In order to compensate schools for the loss of fee income, the stateundertook to increase funding allocations to these schools. This allocationis aimed at providing a “minimum basic package of school inputs in orderto make quality education a possibility”. In terms of these regulations, the

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Minister declared schools in national quintiles 1 and 2 to be no-fee schoolsfrom January 2007.

Table 2 shows the per-learner targets that were set for provincial funding tothe no-fee schools in national quintiles 1 and 2 for 2007, 2008 and 2009. The“no-fee threshold” is explained below.

TTaabbllee 22..PPrroovviinncciiaall ppeerr--lleeaarrnneerr ffuunnddiinngg ttaarrggeettss ffoorr nnoo--ffeeee sscchhoooollss

Provinces are encouraged to fund schools at the target level, and mostprovinces do this. The no-fee threshold is what the government considers“minimally adequate” for each year – that is, the minimum amount perpupil that every school should get. If a province funds schools at less thanthis, the school may charge fees. The reason for this, say the Amended Normsand Standards, is to ensure that “a critical level of public funding is reachedbefore private funding in the form of fees is received”. On the face of it, thisdoes not seem to make much sense because it penalises the children andparents at schools which receive the least funding. Presumably the reason forit is that provincial education budgets are set by the provincial legislaturesand not controlled by the national Minister of Education. Therefore, theMinister cannot prescribe the exact amounts that should be allocated toschools. Thus the Minister has to use moral and political pressure to ensurethat provinces comply. Such pressure is presumably exercised partly bymaking public the minimally adequate no-fee threshold.

Table 3 provides information about the actual levels of funding for no-feeschools in 2008.

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22000077 22000088 22000099

Quintile 1 target allocation R738 R775 R807

Quintile 2 target allocation R677 R711 R740

No-fee threshold R554 R581 R605

TTaabbllee 33.. NNoo--ffeeee sscchhoooollss aanndd lleeaarrnneerrss ffoorr 22000088

Source: No-fee schools by province, as gazetted on 5 December 2007 (information supplied toauthor by Department of Education).

As can be seen in Table 3, in 2008 six provinces are funding their quintile 1schools at the target level of R775 per learner, one province (Mpumalanga)is funding them above that level (R803 per learner) and two provinces arefunding quintile 1 schools below the target level – Limpopo is providingquintile 1 schools with R629 per learner and Eastern Cape is funding itsschools at the no-fee threshold level of R581 per learner. The pattern forquintile 2 schools is similar, with Eastern Cape again funding schools at theno-fee threshold level, five provinces providing the target allocation of R711per learner or very close to it, and two provinces providing an allocationbetween the target and the no-fee threshold levels. Only Gauteng is fundingquintile 2 schools above the target level, presumably on the sensibleassumption that since neither quintile 1 nor quintile 2 schools can chargefees, there is no reason why quintile 2 schools should have a lower allocation.

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PPrroovviinnccee NNuummbbeerr oofflleeaarrnneerrss iinnnnoo--ffeeeesscchhoooollss iinn22000088

NNuummbbeerrooff nnoo--ffeeeesscchhoooollssiinn 22000088

PPeerr lleeaarrnneerraallllooccaattiioonniinn qquuiinnttiillee11 ((RRaanndd))

PPeerr lleeaarrnneerraallllooccaattiioonniinn qquuiinnttiillee22 ((RRaanndd))

TToottaall ssppeenndd((RRaanndd))

Eastern Cape 1 206 3161 3 7391 5811 5811 700 869 5961

Free State 304 2061 1 2531 7751 7111 229 415 9701

Gauteng 382 5711 4261 7751 7751 296 492 5251

KwaZulu-Natal 1 149 3911 3 3821 7751 7111 858 590 1211

Limpopo 1 011 2201 2 8321 6291 6291 636 057 3801

Mpumalanga 420 3951 9511 8031 6491 298 844 0291

Northern Cape 110 9191 3491 7751 7131 83 169 2491

North West 300 4691 9271 7751 7111 225 281 0751

Western Cape 135 0671 4051 7751 7111 99 881 2771

TTOOTTAALL 55 002200 5555441 1144 2266441 7744001 6688881 33 442288 660011 2222221

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Implementation of the no-fee-schools policy

There were some problems surrounding the implementation of the no-feeschools policy. Media reports, especially in the first half of 2007, alleged thatsome schools designated as no-fee schools were still insisting that parentspay fees. There were also reports that although schools were no longerallowed to charge fees, they were not getting the increased allocations thatthey were supposed to. While it is unclear whether or not these problemsstill exist, such media reports do appear to have subsided. In any case, it islikely that implementation problems were experienced as the new policy wasbeing introduced and that they tapered off later as the policy was acceptedand understood.

Not much research has been done yet on these problems. However, aresearch project on no-fee schools was conducted by the Centre forEducation Policy Development (CEPD) for the KwaZulu-Natal Departmentof Education in September 2007. Although the study was not large enoughto be decisive, it found that the no-fee system has been welcomed by bothpoor communities and schools. Although the fees had been less than R100per year at many poor schools, they had still been significant toimpoverished communities, especially when added to the non-fee costs ofschooling such as uniforms. Furthermore, school principals and teachers atno-fee schools were relieved not to have the stressful task of pressuringparents to pay school fees. In addition, principals now had greater certaintyabout their funding and the amount of the allocation for the coming year.This enabled better planning. The study also found some evidence thatchildren had moved from fee-paying schools (presumably mainly quintile 3schools) to no-fee schools. A study by Russell Wildeman of IDASA –Reviewing Eight Years of the Implementation of the School Funding Norms,2000 to 2008 – appears to confirm this.

The CEPD study also identified weaknesses in the new policies, mainly withregard to their implementation. Communications between the Departmentof Education and the schools was often poor. Schools felt that they had notbeen adequately informed about matters affecting them, and many schoolswere confused about what they were allowed to do under the policy. In manyschools, the Department did not provide training in the financialmanagement requirements for no-fee schools; where such training was

provided, it was inadequate. Departmental officials complained about thelate submission of documents from many schools, a problem made worse bythe rural location and remoteness of many no-fee schools, and theunreliability or absence of telephone services at many schools. Many Section21 schools complained that their funding allocations arrived late, and non-Section 21 schools had the same complaint about their allowances.4 In manycases, this late arrival of funds caused uncertainty and serious cash-flowproblems. There were also some problems related to perceived inflexibilityin the way allocations and allowances could be used, including the inabilityof schools to employ personnel such as security guards with money receivedfrom the Department. Some of these problems have been echoed in mediareports in 2007 and 2008, quoting school principals and teacherrepresentatives. In addition, there have been complaints in the media thatthe additional allocations were insufficient to meet the basic needs ofschools.

School fees in former Model C schools

At the other end of the public school spectrum, mainly in the former ModelC schools, there was a different sort of problem with school fees. Asmentioned earlier, schools in wealthier areas used the powers given to themby the South African Schools Act to charge relatively high fees. These schoolswere generally believed to provide the best education in the public schoolsector. Many black parents, whose children had been barred from theseschools by apartheid, now sought admission for their children but oftenfound the fees burdensome. Even some white parents, who previously didnot have to pay fees at these levels, felt that the fees were straining theirresources. Government came under increasing pressure to do somethingabout what sections of the public considered to be exorbitant fees. In late2006, the Minister of Education responded with a revised policy on feeexemptions – Regulations Relating to the Exemption of Parents from Paymentof School Fees in Public Schools.

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4 The terms Section 21 and non-Section 21 refer to a section of the South African Schools Act which provides for schoolsto be allocated functions additional to those given to all schools by the Act. These additional functions include the rightto purchase their own textbooks, to choose the subject options offered at the school, and to maintain and improveschool property. Schools which have been granted such functions are provided with allowances to carry them out, whileother schools have “paper budgets” administered by the provincial education department. (More details about thesefunctions can be found in the School Governance booklet in this series.)

First of all, a number of categories of learner received automatic exemptionfrom the payment of fees in any public school. These include any learner:

• who is an orphan or was abandoned by his or her parents;• who lives in a foster home;• who has been placed in a youth care centre or a place of safety; • who heads a household or is part of a child-headed household; or• on whose behalf a poverty-linked grant (e.g. a child support grant) is paid

by the state.

Learners who do not qualify for automatic exemption may qualify for eithera total or partial exemption, depending on their family’s income. Learnersqualifying for total exemption do not need to pay any fees, while learnerswho qualify for partial exemption need pay only a portion of the fee. In thecase of total exemptions, the policy is more or less what it was previously –that is, parents with a combined income less than ten times the schools feereceive a full exemption from fees for all their children.

An important difference with the new regulations is that parents who candemonstrate that they qualify for a partial exemption are entitled by law tothe exemption if they apply for it. In other words, the granting of anexemption is no longer at the discretion of the governing body.

The actual amount of the partial exemption can be calculated according toa formula developed by the national Department of Education. Thisformula is explained in the Regulations, and is also available from schools orfrom the provincial or national departments of education. According to thisformula, parents with one child at a public school are entitled to partialexemption if their income is less than approximately thirty times the schoolfees. Parents with more than one child in the same or another public schoolare now entitled to additional relief, the amount depending on the numberof children and the school’s fees as a proportion of the parents’ income. Inthe calculation, “school fees” must now include any additional contributionsdemanded by the schools such as for textbooks, calculators, stationery andother things a learner may have to buy in order to participate in the normalprogramme of the school.

The extent of the partial exemptions and the fact that they are no longer

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granted at the discretion of the governing body initially raised fears on thepart of some of the higher-fee schools that their incomes would dropsubstantially, leading to financial problems. However, many parents whowould qualify for partial exemptions appear not to have applied – at leastnot in the first year that the new regulations took effect (2008), and so thesefears do not appear to have been realised.

School Fees and Equity

Until recently, a crucial question faced South Africa: Can the completeabolition of school fees help to provide equity and quality in schooling? Thisquestion has changed somewhat since the abolition of fees at the quintile 1and 2 schools and their likely abolition at the quintile 3 schools. Thereappears to be widespread social approval for this move. Virtually allcriticism of government arising from the introduction of no-fee schools hascentred around implementation or resource allocation, and not principle.The issue of school fees is now mainly whether quintile 4 and 5 schoolsshould, like schools in the lower quintiles, also be prevented from chargingfees.

The question of school fees needs to be considered within the largerquestions of social inequality and education quality. It is obvious to anyonewho cares to look that the South African school system is inequitable – thatis, unfair to large numbers of learners – and that the inequalities are largelystructured along the lines of apartheid schooling. Most of the former whiteschools are in the top quintile (although some are in quintile 4). They aregenerally perceived to provide the best quality education, as witnessed by thelarge number of parents sending their children long distances daily andpaying high fees to enable their children to attend them. These schools couldfairly accurately be described as serving an emerging, multi-racial middleclass, although African learners and teachers are still significantly under-represented. Possibly only one-quarter to one-third of all learners (andalmost certainly less than 10% of teachers) in these schools are African,5

compared to the almost 80% of Africans in the population as a whole.

The poorest schools – that is, those in the three bottom quintiles – are

5 My own estimate. Exact figures are not available.

overwhelmingly former Bantustan or urban African schools, and theirlearners and teachers are almost entirely African. Their lack of resources andlearning cultures and the poverty of the surrounding communities fromwhich their learners are drawn ensure that the quality of education that theyoffer is, in the main, low. The former coloured and Indian schools are stillmostly somewhere in between with respect to both resources andeducational quality.

This situation was encouraged by the system of school fees, and theintroduction of no-fee schools (even when it is extended to quintile 3schools) is unlikely to change it substantially in the immediate future. Thisstructural inequality in the school system is inherited from apartheid andSouth Africa has not succeeded in overcoming it, despite the stated will ofgovernment and of policy aims which seek greater equality.

Against this background, then – and keeping in mind the long-held goal ofequal education reflected in the founding documents of the new educationsystem – what are our options with regard to school fees?

One option would be to continue on the current path of extending the no-fee concept to schools in quintiles 3, 4 and 5. While there is clearly supportfor easing the financial burden on parents through the abolition of fees atquintile 3 schools, and probably also at quintile 4 schools, there is likely tobe strong opposition from various social sectors for their abolition inquintile 5.6 This is because the problem today is much the same as it wasimmediately after the arrival of democratic government in 1994. If the statefunded all schools equally (on a per-pupil basis) and did not allow thebetter-off schools to charge fees, the resources available to these schoolswould be substantially lower than they are now. If the state funded thepoorer schools more favourably in order to bring about redress ofinequalities, this would of course reduce the resources available to thebetter-off schools even more. Without doubt, one effect of this would be adrop in the quality of the education that they offer.

It is true that the facilities and personnel at some schools may be excessive in

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6 One should note here that quintile 5 is the most diverse of all the quintiles. So although parents at most quintile 5school would probably want to ensure that they can supplement state funding with fees, quintile 5 also includes someless affluent schools which may indeed welcome no-fee status.

that they do little to improve learners’ academic achievement – for example,AstroTurf hockey fields or specialist sports coaches in some of the more elitepublic schools – or that some schools may offer more extensive curriculumchoices than necessary. Plainly some of this expenditure could be cut withoutany significant compromise to educational standards. However, it is equallyclear that the kind of funding cuts that would result from an end to schoolfees would have a significant effect on class sizes, learning and teachingmaterials, library and laboratory materials and equipment, extracurricularactivities and so on. This would undoubtedly lead to many middle-classparents, both black and white, withdrawing their children from publicschools and enrolling them in a private schooling system which would growrapidly in response – with the consequences foreseen by White Paper 2,discussed above. Those who could not afford to make the move to privateschools would be left in schools whose educational standards wouldgradually deteriorate unless the state could replace the lost resources.

One way to get around this problem could be by the abolition ofcompulsory fees at all schools, while still allowing schools to ask for fees.This solution could, however, come with similar problems. While it mayclearly be in the interest of a school to charge fees in order to maintain orimprove levels of educational provision, individual parents may not see itthis way, even if they can afford to pay fees. Or they may decline to pay ifthey feel it is unfair for them to pay while other parents do not. Or they maydecide to pay less than the school needs – since payment of fees would notbe compulsory, they could effectively set their own fee levels. The result isthat the income of schools would fall, with a consequent fall in levels ofprovision and, again, an exodus of parents and their children to the privateschools.

So, at least in the short run, abolishing fees at all public schools would comeat a price we may not be willing to pay. In addition, inequitable publicschooling may be replaced by a system with a more marked inequalitybetween the public and private schools sectors.

The key problem seems to be that the state has so far been unable to providefree education of a quality that prepares sufficient numbers of learners forfurther and higher education without the assistance of private funding inthe form of fees. This is clearly where the state’s attentions and energies

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should be focused. The abolition of school fees at all schools will be a moreviable option once the non-fee-paying schools – or at least a substantialproportion of them – are able to offer quality education at a level thatprovides learners with a sound basis for acquiring higher-level knowledgeand skills.

If the state continues to run a two-tier public school system – with fee-paying schools for the middle class offering good-quality education whileschools serving the majority are free but of poor quality – it opens itself(justifiably) to charges of a pro-middle-class bias. The issues of school fees,school finance more generally and school quality must be considered inrelation to one another. It is only by improving educational quality – partlybut by no means exclusively through increased resources – at themainstream (i.e. poor, mainly township and rural) schools that theschooling system can benefit the poor. Allowing what are now our bestschools to deteriorate will not assist disadvantaged sectors of thepopulation. Only the long, hard struggle to improve educational quality –and moving towards an education of equal quality for all – will achieve this.The challenge is to provide fee-free schooling for all without damaging thesmall section of the schooling system that currently works relatively well. Toachieve this, we need a medium-term to long-term plan that combinesquality improvement for all schools (and particularly those in the lowestthree or four quintiles), an increase of resource provision to schools in thosequintiles and, inevitably, a short-term tolerance of inequalities that cannotbe eliminated rapidly.

Further Reading

African National Congress (ANC). 2007. Resolutions of the 52nd NationalConference. Johannesburg: ANC.

Nelson Mandela Foundation. 2005. Emerging Voices: A Report on Educationin South African Rural Communities. Pretoria: HSRC Press.

Nzimande, B. and Mathieson, S. 2004. Transforming South AfricanEducation: The Role of the ANC Education Study Group, 1994-1999.Johannesburg: Centre for Education Policy Development.

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Pandor, N. 2007. Speech by Mrs Naledi Pandor, MP, Minister of Education,Tabling the Departmental Budget Vote for the 2007/08 Financial Year.

Pretorius, D and Veriava, F. n.d. (2007 or 2008). School Fees: Your Rights.Johannesburg: Centre for Applied Legal Studies, University of theWitwatersrand.

Wildeman, R.A. 2008. Reviewing Eight Years of the Implementation of theSchool Funding Norms, 2000 to 2008. IDASA Research Paper. Pretoria:IDASA.

Websites

All the official documents mentioned in this booklet – White Papers,legislation and official reports – can be found either on the Department ofEducation website or the Government of South Africa website.

African National Congresswww.anc.org.za

Centre for Education Policy Developmentwww.cepd.org.za

Department of Educationwww.doe.gov.za

Global Campaign for Educationwww.campaignforeducation.org

Government of South Africawww.gov.za

School Fees Abolition Initiativewww.unesco.org/education/efa/WG2006/Schoolfeesabolitioninitiative_2006.pdf

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This is one of a series of booklets on key issues in education and training policy in South Africa. Each booklet deals with one such issue and aims to give the reader, in plain English, an informed overview of the topic and its implications for various stakeholders.

The intended readership includes a wide range of people with an interest in the education and training system – members of Parliament or of provincial legislatures, teachers, trade unionists, employers, student and community activists, education department officials, journalists, governors of educational institutions, members of local or provincial education and training councils, and interested members of the general public.

Issues in Education Policy, Number 3School Fees

The issue of school fees is a difficult one in South Africa. After nearly fifteen years of ANC government, calls for free school education continue to be made by leaders of the ANC and its allied organisations. This is in line with both South Africa’s Constitution and international trends.

This booklet summarises the recent history of calls for free education in South Africa, and examines why school fees were introduced in public schools after 1994. It goes on to discuss the issue of fee exemptions and the establishment of poverty quintiles to guide government expenditure to public schools. The booklet then looks at the introduction of the no-fee-schools policy and its effects – both good and bad – on various types of schools in the country. It also discusses the problematic relationship between school fees and equity in South African education.