Norms and Standards for Public School Funding: Department briefing

Ms M Mentor (ANC) stated that the documents did not elaborate enough and that there was no section on impact. She asked whether there had been an impact analysis because that is what they were after. She mentioned that the scenario had not changed since 1998 and that public schools existed where fees were still high. She listed Westerford High School as an example.

Ms Mentor (ANC) asked if there had been interrelation of policy and why the difference in quintile one had been just 0.6%.

Mr Ntuli (ANC) asked why there were still substantial allocations to the wealthiest schools. He mentioned that if this were not addressed then constant population shift would occur. Some other schools had been busy amassing capital with bank accounts running into millions. He asked how we would get out of the poverty cycle and what steps had been taken to realize this. There seemed to be a well planned movement of poor learners to white schools. How would the department subsidize this?

Mr Patel responded that besides their best efforts there was still a lack of awareness and one million pamphlets had been distributed. This was however not having an impact even though the Department had established a call centre. He stated that the role of the public was very important.

Mr Hindle asked how the issue of parents in poor schools should be looked at and how they were to be protected against victimization. He stated that because of high personnel costs in richer schools, their allocation had been higher. The 0.6% that Ms Mentor had referred to read that 60% more had been spent.

Mr Patel stated that the leveling the playing fields question had two issues. What could the Department do and how could it articulate block grants? It was the responsibility of the principal and governing body to ensure that parents knew their rights.

Ms Mentor stated that School Governing Bodies and parents did not do the poverty profile and the social responsibility lay with the Department.

Mr A Gaum (ANC) asked if children received fewer funds and if this were a transitional measure, how long would it last.

The Chairperson stated that it should not be assumed that the Committee knew what the abbreviations in the document meant. He queried the issue of money being given to the schools.

Mr Hindle responded that section 21 schools had gotten "real" money. Section 20 schools had gotten some money but the rest was with the Department. The Chairperson should also play a role since it was everyone’s responsibility to make sure that parents understood. This was a public participation process.

The Minister of Finance had given the money for incentives to teachers who got hardship posts. Mr Hindle stated that no school had their allocation taken away.

Ms Mentor (ANC) asked if it was schools or school fees that contributed to the quality of schools. Or was it both? She also asked about learners doing chores at schools instead of concentrating on their studies.

Mr Ntuli (ANC) asked if the Department was satisfied with the adequacy of training and monitoring of the section 21 schools. There had also been stories about corruption between schools and certain bookshops.

Mr Hindle responded that the only criteria had been whether the schools would be able to manage the funds themselves. The movement from a section 20 to 21 school should only happen if the ability to manage funds had been demonstrated. He did not believe the monitoring had been tight enough. There had to be a balance between local procurement and procuring goods and services from afar. R5 billion had been injected into schools. He stated that the school allocation made the difference in quality. This problem had to do with history rather than current legislation.

Mr Boinamo (DA) said that the Department had to give learners pamphlets. He asked whether there had been any agreement reached and with whom.

The Chairperson stated that the Committee still had to approve the annual report.

The meeting was adjourned.

Appendix:

1. In the final apartheid years, spending on our school learners was both highly inequitable and highly inadequate. Spending on each white learner was five times that of spending on each African learner. Moreover, spending on each African learner was around R2,500 at today’s prices. This was clearly not in tune with the country’s economic status or our developmental needs.
2. A decade later, we have achieved a public funding per learner profile that is almost perfectly equitable, as you shall see. Moreover, spending on each African learner has doubled since 1994 in real terms. In other words, we can buy twice as much for each African learner when compared to the final apartheid years.
3. The 1996 South African Schools Act required the Minister of Education to pronounce norms and standards on the funding of public schools. Norms were released in 1998, and full implementation started in 2000. The 1998 National Norms and Standards for School Funding focused strongly on the non-personnel non-capital part of school funding, what is now often referred to as ‘NPNC’.
4. Personnel funding has been determined through a separate process, linked to the Employment of Educators Act and the post provisioning system. In this regard, the funding of non-educators working in schools is a policy area which has admittedly not received adequate attention. The Department is currently dealing with this. The funding of infrastructure development in the schooling system has also followed a slightly separate process, though the 1998 Norms and Standards do establish fundamental principles in this regard.
5. The 1998 Norms and Standards emphasised the need for pro-poor non-personnel non-capital funding, and established a ratio of 7:1 for expenditure on the poorest learners relative to spending on the least poor learners in the schooling system.
6. What the 1998 Norms did not deal with sufficiently was the absolute amount of funding needed for each learner. The result was that from 2000 a pro-poor funding pattern became entrenched, but the amount being allocated in a pro-poor manner was in the case of some provinces ridiculously low. This was one of the problems that prompted the Department to produce the 2003 Review of the financing, resourcing and costs of education in public schools and the 2003 Plan of Action.
7. Those documents in turn led to proposed amendments to the Norms and Standards, released for public comment in 2004, and certain changes to the South African Schools Act captured in the 2005 Education Laws Amendment Bill. The emphasis has been to strengthen the adequacy component of our policies, in other words make it clearer what level of non-personnel funding is required to produce quality schooling. This has been linked in the amended policy to the crucial issue of school fees. A proper policy framework for the abolition of school fees will be established, and the political emphasis is clearly on ensuring that school fees, which clearly do cause tension and hardships for some households, be abolished in our poorest schools. We are ready to begin the first phase of this process in 2006.