No Light At The End Of This Tunnel
The second government White Paper on Education was published on 14 February 1996. Its recommendations are based upon two previous documents issued in 1995. The first, the Hunter Report published on 31 August 1995, was a Review of the “Organisation, Governance and Funding of Schools”. The second, based on the Hunter Report, appeared on the 24 November in the same year and was composed of a Draft Education White Paper published for information and comment. The latest White Paper was the forerunner of the South African Schools Bill, due to be presented to parliament later this year. At this stage of the education reform programme one proposal by the Education Ministry is clear. The government plans to place schools in one of two categories. Private schools are in future to be known as independent schools; all other schools will be described as public schools. Nothing else is clear.
This provision, according to the Hunter Report, will affect some 25162 schools, of which 457 are at present classed as private schools. More than 10 million pupils are destined to enrol at public schools: only some 124000 pupils attend private schools. It is thus very clear indeed that the government’s education programme will have to cater for the overwhelming majority of primary and secondary school pupils. Private schools will cater for fewer than 1 in 80 of pupils throughout the country. There has been much thundering about the extent to which private (independent) schools hog the available human and material resources. Yet it must be obvious that fundamental reform of education cannot be based upon that popular formula of transferring resources from the at present “advantaged” institutions to the “previously disadvantaged” ones. Nor can the equity fundamental to the desegregation of schools and upgrading of the entire public school system be based upon the various chants so beloved of demagogues of all colours, ages and degrees of ignorance.
The Hunter Report, which itself ignores the implication of its own statistical data, nevertheless provides some vital information. For example, it indicates that in 1992 there were 23000 schools not under the House of Assembly, which provided for the needs of about 2260 schools. In short, the ratio of “disadvantaged” to “advantaged” schools was 10 to 1. There is no way in which the underfunded, understaffed and crumbling segregated schooling system created (largely by neglect) for the oppressed can be even marginally repaired by transferring resources from the “white” schools of yesterday and today to the rest of the public schools of tomorrow. The claim that repair could be achieved by this means has been part of the confused demagogy that has been the fashion for the past few years. This stems from two fallacies. First, it formed part of the myths and popular chants intended to give the education-hungry masses the impression that education “playing fields could be leveled” in this simplistic way. The second source of error lay in a combination of wilful and unpardonable refusal on the part of the majority in the government of national unity to understand the basic economics of South African society. They have refused to tell the truth about the lack of money for education (and health and social services), and what underlies this lack of funds in “Africa’s richest country”.
The Hunter Report shows, for example, that more than R5000 is required every year for each pupil in the “white” schools. The shortfall in other schools ranges from R716 to R4000 per pupil per year. There is no possibility that “equity” could be achieved by spending less than R5000 per annum per pupil to make up for the lack of schools, teachers, equipment, maintenance and for all other categories of expenditure in education. But, assuming a modest increase of R1000 per pupil as a first step towards such a goal, the 9220000 pupils in underfunded schools would require and extra R9.22 billion every year (since the bulk of education expenditure repeats itself annually). This would be 30% more than the current budget of R31.8 billion for education. The basic economic problem is thus an enormous one. And there is no point in pretending otherwise or providing obviously false explanations of how remedies can be applied within the present South African economy and within the framework of present political policies.
The Education Ministry has made no effort whatsoever to present a budget forecast to test its plans that rushed forth from the offices in Pretoria as rapidly as the recent floods in the country. Nor has it, as it owes to do, made any effort to explain why it is that the accumulation of social capital (of necessary finance) has been negative for years. Vast amounts of borrowings have been used to cover up shortfalls in government finances. The frightening truth is that the current government debt is R275 billion - nearly nine times the amount spent on necessary basic education. There is no merit at all in boasting that South Africa spends more than 22% of its annual budget on education and in claiming that that exceeds the percentage spent by most other countries
The actual problem becomes quite grotesque when one looks at the current “remedies” that are being imposed upon the school system. The retrenchment of tens of thousands of teachers makes the future a nightmare for parents, teachers and pupils. Yet this measure is presented as a necessary “economy” because, the education authorities claim, there are too many teachers in “white”, “coloured” and “asiatic” schools teaching too few pupils. The rapid change of nearly ALL schools (not merely the 94% of 2200 “white” schools mentioned in the Hunter Report) to fee-paying institutions is nothing but highway robbery that has encompassed the whole of the country. The elaborate planning of minister Bengu’s department provides employment for a large army of experts. None of them, however, is allowed to link the education reform plans with the necessary, basic, non-existent economic planning upon which much of such transformation must rest.
The task imposes a bureaucratic tunnel vision upon the education reformers. But there is no light at the end of their tunnel.
The Hunter Report names thirteen central problems in the current system. These range from racism to weaknesses in the governance structures. But there is no real reference to the major problem of the poor qualifications of the majority of South Africa’s practising teachers, or to the many language problems, multiplied by forty years of Eiselen-de Vos Malan Christian National Education. Of course the Bengu plan has taken over the Verwoerdian language policy, and this threatens to make even worse the lack of mobility among both pupils and teachers through primary, secondary and tertiary systems.
In the face of all this the Minister is able in a preface to the Hunter Report to observe that the present system is “the most fractured and inequitable on the face of the earth”. Which is substantially true. The plans to remedy these ills have so far amounted to no more than a ban on excluding pupils from any school on the grounds of “race”; to changes of names in classifying schools and supervisory officers; and to an allocation of education funds based upon a central budget, that has no means of providing adequately for education.
The economy of this country has been bled by dominant foreign investors. They make charitable grants to non-government organisations which, like the mission school system, plug the gaping holes in the national education system. The economy has been so restricted to lock in with the dominant industrial metropoles that there are 8 million workless persons in our society who could otherwise become fully economically active. The gross national product would then more than double, the tax revenue would expand, the motivation of people in employment and education would rise like a waking giant and the Education Ministry could dispense with its tunnel vision and adjust to public declarations free of the myths and untruths that create a dense fog around the “erudite” White Papers that have appeared so far. It is because our economy has been starved into its present size that growth has never averaged even 1% per annum for the past fifteen years. It is for the same reason that the State budget is a pauper’s R150 billion. There is an irreducible minimum that the State has to spend on education to keep up past and present pretences. It is R31 billion - 20+% of the total budget and the subject of much boasting. But if the Gross National Product doubled through the employment of 8 million more workers the budget would rise to R300 billion. Bengu’s 20% would rise to R60 billion. Then there would be no need for the current costly fables and pretences. The country could roll up its sleeves and create a democratic education system within a democratic South Africa - but then the chains of global capitalist exploitation of our resources would have to be smashed. And “there’s the rub”.
In 1986 the then Minister of Education, one FW de Klerk, set out a 10-year plan to create equal education for all children. In 1990 the military budget was cut. Education budgets were increased by between 26% and 39% all round. It is now 1996. And Professor Bengu is at the helm. Will his plans lead to a golden era of equal education and quality education? He has yet to ask and answer the most important questions that face all of us.
[THE EDUCATIONAL JOURNAL VOL. 66 #2, OFFICIAL ORGAN OF THE TEACHERS’ LEAGUE OF SOUTH AFRICA, MARCH 1996]
EDITOR : Mrs. H.N. Kies, 15 Upper Bloem Street, Cape Town, 8001
Go to MTA's HomePage - Do not pass BEGIN, Do not collect R200.
visitors since 3 December 1997.