One of the guarantees of our celebrated Constitution is that every child has the right to education. In order to secure this right in practice the law stipulates that fees should not be charged for any child who is an orphan or in foster care, for any child whose guardians receive a state grant or a pension or for any child whose guardians earn less than ten times the annual school fee.
Yet every year many organisations report that this is a very difficult time of the year for poor families. Despite all the laws and policies that protect the right of all children to access schools, children are unlawfully excluded every year because their parents can’t pay fees. Allegations of racist exclusions also remain common.
Often parents are coerced into paying fees that they simply cannot afford with devastating consequences for the general well-being of their households. There are also regular reports of parents being forced to come into schools before they go to their jobs to do cleaning work in lieu of fees. And when children are accepted into schools, when their parents haven’t been able to pay the full fees, there are regular reports of children being humiliated and punished for their parent’s poverty.
There certainly are cases where school principals and governing bodies simply do not want poor or African children in their schools. In these cases the failure of the state is one of omission — a failure to clamp down on the bigotry that is often present in state institutions like some schools and some police stations.
But there are also many cases where principals and governing bodies have no particular animus towards the poor, or towards Africans, but simply cannot run their schools with the money allocated to them by government. In these cases schools that are struggling to buy chalk, pay electricity bills and so on have no viable alternative other than to extract resources from struggling families. One of the reasons why the government is able to get away with self aggrandizing recklessness while basic needs, such as the right of each child to a decent education, are not taken care of is the widespread failure to implement laws and policies when they protect the poor.
It is true enough that we have one of the best constitutions in the world but it is equally true that it is violated by state and private power every day. Most of the time people subject to these kinds of violations simply don’t have the resources to seek legal redress. And when they do get to court they find that the judges in the local courts are not always sympathetic to constitutional values or, in one notorious case, even willing to stay awake, while the poor argue their case. A fair hearing is guaranteed in the Constitutional Court but who has the resources to access the highest court in the land?
The failure to ensure that no child is excluded from school on the basis of their parent’s poverty is just one instance of a general failure to implement legal and policy protections for the poor. One consequence of the radical difference between laws and policies on the one hand, and the lived reality in our society on the other, is that it has now become grossly irresponsible to deny the difference between state principles and state practice. For too long when academics or social movements have raised concrete issues about specific rights violations, politicians have replied with lists of laws and policies. The laws and policies may be commendable but when they are not implemented they offer no alibi for oppression.
If we are to think seriously about our society we must start with the lived reality of life in our society. And that lived reality is one in which the children of the poor are excluded from schools each year. We need to face up to this reality and we need to support the heroic NGOs and social movements that quietly take up this battle year after year.
Spot on and we must ensure the the spirit of the constitution is put into practice in all areas of society. The poorest of the poor are abused not just around education but also health, water and shelter.
Government seems blind to its responsibilities in all these areas
‘And that lived reality is one in which the children of the poor are excluded from schools each year’…
This is a bold statement which are not true – children are not excluded from schools per se – they are excluded from QUALITY EDUCATION !!
The problem with excemptions and school fees starts with the framework within which Gov operates – education is supply driven NOT demand driven . Therefor many schools , in order to provide acceptable teacher/ educator ratio’s , must employ additional educators. Similary the extensive costs of maintenance are ignored by Goverment in its allocation of funds to schools .
And then this same Gov. suddenly allows excemptions without any remedy ( such as Gov grants , etc ) The burden for the higher costs are now to be shared by fewer parents – is this just and fair ????
I have a keen intersts in School Governing issues and would like to request that you make contact with our organiation , The Federation of School Governing Bodies of South Africa in order for us , and all other interested parties , to work together on a workable solution on QUALITY EDUCATION for all.
Have you noticed – the constitution does not refer to FREE or Quality EDUCATION !!!
The debate is URGENT and the solutions desperate !!
And no continious reference to the past will solve our current or future problems – We need to take charge of our own future ( very much like the Japanese did after Hiroshima in 1945 !!)
HANNES JANSEN
There is something positive that can be done about non-delivery of the right to basic education. Visit http://www.ifaisa.org and go the the education tag under the heading “current affairs” – there is much for your comfort there. [By the way - the site is so new that Mr Google has yet to arrange to meet it, so enter the old fashioned way via the top bar on your homepage]
Paul Hoffman
The “right to Quality education” is guaranteed for all in the Constitution. Testing the constitution, however, seems possible for the top level of our politicians and drunken lawyers. But for a few exceptions, ordinary citizens do not have access to this body.
The right to quality education is implemented through a mixture of policies and legislation issued by the National Department of Education. Overseeing bodies are Provincial Departments, District Offices, School Governing Bodies, Headmasters and classroom teachers. In any of these layers one finds hard working individuals with a passion for learners. However, there are a large number of officials who are functionally incompetent for a number of reasons: they do not have the institutional knowledge to function; the control systems are inconsistent or not aligned. Some give up; some beat the system and take the risk of running into difficulties with the auditing function. However, as in all Government systems, there are also people at all levels who have “a job” and do not want to work anymore.
When all is said and done, the Headmaster does set the tone for his school. The headmaster motivates his staff, the parents, the SGB and the students to go the extra mile. In a well run school, the headmaster and his staff work after lessons. The results are visible.
@Hoffman: I did visit http://www.ifaisa.org. I was a little disturbed by the stats on the throughput of the Education system. It seems to concentrate on black students only; this presents a skewed picture of the school system. It brings a racial slant into the debate which is not justified.
All schools receive the same funding according to the funding formulae issued by the Education Department. The formulae is sometimes incorrectly applied or manipulated by the schools. When corrected at a higher level, the outcome can be disastrous for the school if no further communication has taken place. An unexpected supply of non-paying learners has the same effect.
The problems mentioned in the article can often be traced back to poor planning and incorrect data supplied to the district and provincial offices. An unexpected over-supply of learners at the beginning of the learning cycle is disturbing for a school and can make refusal necessary to protect the functioning of system and staff. This is often aggravated by the fact that parents want to bring their children to a school with a good reputation.
Those schools do sometimes refuse to accept learners because they are technically and administratively “full”. The facts that this often happens to black children has more to do with the fact that (a) there are simply more black children in SA and (b) black parents have become more mobile and in their search for quality education forget often to inform the school of their choice
I have a dream
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I once had a dream where one comrade said to the other, “South Africa have some of the most progressive laws in the world”.
“And what might that be”?, said the other,
“for eg. We offer free health to pregnant mothers and infants.
“And where might that be?, said the other.
“In most of the rural areas” replied the comrade
“But there are hardly any hospitals in those area said the other”.
At that point sweating and feverish i abruptly woke up and loudly exclaimed, i cant afford mind altering drugs-is there a progressive law for that.
I went back to sleep and merilly trapezed through a kaleid0scope of progresive laws while the majority of the poor; danced to Brenda Fassie’s, Weekend Special, dreaming within my dream
“…. we need to support the heroic NGOs and social movements that quietly take up this battle year after year”, as you correctly state.
I suggest the NG0s and social movements (of which there are many and some of the finest in the world)
need to re-evaluate their partnership synergy within civil society and with government to implement many of the progressive laws.
I surmise, the developmental state would be partial to this idea. If civil organs fear co-option by the state, they need to forge strong unities on the ground before engaging the new ANC developmental state.The hostility towards and lack of strategic alignment with the state is detrimental to the poor of SA.