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The Democratic Alliance (DA) welcomes the latest education report by Stellenbosch University’s Social Policy Research Group which shows that more money alone cannot fix South Africa’s low-quality schools. The report, titled “Low Quality Education as a Poverty Trap,” suggests that there are numerous measures that schools located in poorer areas can do to increase education quality which do not require greater state resources. This challenges the conventional narrative driven by the Department of Education which tends to blame low performance on a lack of money or resources. For some schools with infrastructure deficiencies, like the mud schools in the Eastern Cape, this is indeed the case. But in most situations, the report reveals that “residents of poor and predominantly black neighbourhoods frequently attend schools with a lack of discipline, weak management and few highly qualified and experienced teachers.” This has little to do with money, but rather with management systems, accountability mechanisms and the quality of teacher training. Based on this, the DA calls on the Department of Education to focus more on enhancing our education system through inexpensive interventions that promote greater accountability and discipline, two key characteristics of excellent schools.
The DA-run Western Cape Education Department (WCED) has already started to introduce performance-enhancing measures, such as teacher/principal performance agreements and competency tests for matric subject markers, yet without incurring more costs to the public. These measures require little money, but they introduce a culture of excellence and accountability across the province. However, this could be replicated with little money across the country as well.
After, all, since 1994, the Department of Education has made great strides to push more money into poorer schools, as attested by the report which states that, regarding non-personnel expenditure, “Public spending on the poorest fifth of schools is roughly six times higher than spending on the richest fifth of schools.” Furthermore, the state allocates 21% of the national budget to education, one of the largest expenditure ratios on education in the world. This makes up 5.3% of our GDP, far more than most other African countries. So money is not the primary issue.
In fact, the key finding of the report is that education, which was supposed to be the great equalizer of the post-apartheid era, has ironically reinforced inequality and trapped poor people in poverty. This is a tragedy. While the state has done much to shift funds and resources to poorer schools, it has not shown the same resolve in professionalizing those schools’ management systems, making teachers and principals accountable for their performance, or instilling a culture of discipline and excellence there. Yet there is nothing more important than ensuring success at our schools through teacher accountability based on performance. The DA believes that, once these efforts are made, our education system can offer the poor the type of high-quality education that allows them to use their knowledge to break out of poverty.