Why school fees?

Submitted by Paul Colditz

The newly elected ANC president kicked off the new year with a seemingly sensitive and important issue, namely to institute free school education by 2009 for learners in 60% of South Africa’s public schools for the full duration of their school career.

This declared objective requires extensive comment.

On the face of it, it is of course a laudable ideal. One of the requirements of the International Convention on the Rights of the Child is free education for all learners in the primary phase of school education. The African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child in turn requires “free and compulsory basic education” for learners. (The exact meaning of “basic education” has not yet been agreed.) The question is, however, whether this laudable ideal is feasible in a South African context, and what this context actually looks like.

South Africa has a total of about 25 000 public schools. In reality, though, only a small percentage of those schools actually levy school fees worth speaking of. On December 5 2007, just less than 15 000 of them were declared “no-fee schools” with effect from 2008. This means that those schools may in fact not levy any school fees and that they must provide education free of charge. They therefore already represent 60% of the total number of public schools in the country. This makes one wonder where Mr Zuma was when the Gazette containing this announcement was issued.

To put this in context, it is important to note that these public schools in any event either levied no school fees, or levied fees ranging from R50 to R200 per year. What is more, a very small percentage of the school fees were in fact being paid, simply because the parents were too poor or due to the absence of a culture of payment.

A further important contextual fact is the basis on which public schools are funded. Apart from the provision of educators to schools, schools receive state funding for their operational costs based on a sliding scale. In 2008, 20% of South African schools labelled as “most affluent” are supposed to receive R129 per learner per year from the state. Schools falling in the next 20% category are to receive R388 per learner per year, while the poorest 20% will get R775 per learner per year. Based on a learner corps of 1 000, the “most affluent” school will therefore receive R129 000 per year as opposed to the “poorest” school’s R775 000.

These amounts have to cover all the school’s operational expenditure. This includes maintenance of school grounds, buildings and equipment; service fees such as water and electricity; telephone, fax and communication costs; stationery; copying costs; all learning material; and security. To fully understand the extent of the state’s contribution, it is worth mentioning that an average school’s water and electricity bill alone amounts to as much as R360 000 per year. In one case a municipality charged a rural Free State school R240 000 for a year’s refuse removal.

In a 2003 survey among its members, the Federation of South African School Governing Bodies (Fedsas) found that the state’s contribution to the running operational costs of the schools included in the survey amounted to only 3% to 7% of the schools’ total costs. In the case of the “affluent” school mentioned above with a state contribution of R129 000 in 2008, this means that the school will have to scrape out R4-million to balance its books.

The same survey found that the single biggest expense on all schools’ budgets was the remuneration of additional staff appointed by governing bodies. This amounted to 30% to 40% of most schools’ budgets. Firstly, these so-called governing-body staff members are appointed to improve eventually the quality of school education by allowing smaller classes and more specialised and differentiated education; secondly, they are appointed for administrative and maintenance work.

According to a Fedsas calculation, in this way public-school governing bodies create about 100 000 jobs for the skilled and the unskilled, while parents contribute approximately R10-billion to school education. Without this contribution, with merely the existing state funding model, sensible and quality school education would not be possible.

Taking into account that parents who cannot afford school fees are, on application and subject to certain criteria, in any event entitled to exemption from the payment of school fees, it is clear that a much larger percentage of learners than only those in Mr Zuma’s 60% of South African schools are already educated for free.

Mr Zuma’s education advisers clearly still have a lot to learn about school education in this country!

Paul Colditz is an attorney specialising in educational and constitutional law. He was the national chairperson of the Federation of Governing Bodies of South African Schools from 1998 to 2006, when he was appointed full-time CEO of the organisation. He has also served as a member and chairperson of governing bodies of pre-primary, primary and secondary schools in Bloemfontein from 1988 until 2005.