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KwaZulu-Natal MPL and DA spokesman on education Tom Stokes warned that barring schools from giving preference to pupils in their immediate vicinity could spell the demise of fee-paying schools.<\/p>\n
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Principals, parents and school governing body associations firmly believe that the KwaZulu-Natal Education Department cannot legally enforce a first come, first served approach to admissions. <\/p>\n
But if the department was able to do so, one of the implications could be an influx of impoverished pupils, desperate to be educated at some of Durban\u2019s top schools. <\/p>\n
While the SA Schools Act stipulates that no pupil may be refused a place at a school if they cannot afford the fees, the cost of running a prestige school is enormous. <\/p>\n
MPL and DA spokesman on education Tom Stokes warned that barring schools from giving preference to pupils in their immediate vicinity could spell the demise of fee-paying schools. <\/p>\n
\u201cBetter schools \u2013 and these invariably have the highest school fees \u2013 do not follow the racial demographics of the country but the economic demographics. The only multi-racial schools in our country at present are, in fact, the ex-Model C schools. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt is easy to imagine masses of poor black pupils rushing to find non-fee-paying positions in ex-Model C schools, but highly unlikely that many affluent white pupils would rush to the local township school to balance the racial equations there,\u201d Stokes said. <\/p>\n
Paul Colditz, lawyer and chief executive officer of the Federation of Governing Bodies of SA Schools, said his members had been advised that the department\u2019s instruction was unlawful and to proceed with \u201cbusiness as usual\u201d. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not going to happen,\u201d he said of the first come, first-served policy. \u201cIf they try to enforce it we\u2019ll see them in court.\u201d <\/p>\n
However, Colditz \u201cabsolutely\u201d agreed that a consequence of such a rule could be an |increase in non-fee payers which would \u201cdestroy quality education\u201d. <\/p>\n
While the government does compensate schools for pupils who apply for fee exemptions, Colditz said the federation\u2019s |latest survey showed the subsidy represented only 11.54 percent of the budget of its member schools in KZN. <\/p>\n
\u201cIn some it will be substantially less than that and in |others more. Therefore, in some schools, it will not even cover the municipal expenses,\u201d Colditz said. <\/p>\n
The survey revealed that fee exemptions accounted for 9.49 percent of school budgets, with a slightly larger slice of 16.87 going towards irrecoverable fees. <\/p>\n
Remuneration of school governing body teachers took up 41.75 percent of budgets, and water and lights and refuse removal 5.73 percent. <\/p>\n
The former principal of a leading boys\u2019 high school remarked that, before 1996, the government had provided the bulk of funds to run such schools. <\/p>\n
\u201cSince the introduction of the new policy of norms and standards for school funding and the introduction of the quintile system, most of the ex-Model C schools found themselves in quintile five with vastly reduced funding,\u201d Colditz said. <\/p>\n
The quintile system is a nationally applied poverty-ranking from one to five, with five being the most affluent schools. <\/p>\n
\u201cIn such schools the state might fund salaries of half the teaching staff, one cleaner and one admin assistant, and provide approximately only R200 per pupil to cover textbooks and running expenses.\u201d <\/p>\n
Colditz explained that in terms of the responsibilities devolved upon school governing bodies according to section 21 of the South African Schools Act, they would be responsible for costs including maintenance, capital development, security, cleaning, extracurricular activities, transport and salaries for the other 50 percent of the teaching, administrative and grounds staff. <\/p>\n
Schools with full section 21 status manage their own finances. <\/p>\n
\u201cIn return for these additional responsibilities the school governing bodies were allotted certain functions and powers with regard to admissions, payments to state employees, recommendations of educator appointments etc,\u201d Colditz said. <\/p>\n
However, to have these additional functions is getting more and more expensive. Some schools have now estimated that their parent communities cover up to 75 percent of the total costs of operating their schools. The burden of costs has therefore shifted significantly from the state to the parent community. <\/p>\n
Each school governing board has a responsibility to collect school fees to cover all these costs and the legal right to collect them. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
KwaZulu-Natal MPL and DA spokesman on education Tom Stokes warned that barring schools from giving preference to pupils in their immediate vicinity could spell the demise of fee-paying schools. Principals, parents and school governing body associations firmly believe that the KwaZulu-Natal Education Department cannot legally enforce a first come, first served approach to admissions. But […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[8275,953,2143],"class_list":{"0":"post-12671","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-south-africa","7":"tag-durban","8":"tag-newspaper","9":"tag-the-mercury","10":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12671","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12671"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12671\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12671"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12671"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12671"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}