THE IMPLICATIONS OF BEING DECLARED A NO FEE SCHOOL


Can eliminating school fees in poor districts boost enrollment?

The charging of school fees is a much debated issue in developing countries, including
South Africa. Criticisms have been leveled against the ruling party in the government
which is the Africa National Congress by other politicians and interest groups. A report
issued by the Sunday Times newspaper (9 July 2009) indicated that the abolishment of
school fees in public schools have been met with a lot of controversy. According to the Sunday Times (2009:13), some principals in Limpopo complained that the elimination of
school fees was not efficiently and effectively carried out. At the same time the total
elimination of school fees was welcomed with gladness and cheer, especially poor
household who have been relieved from the pangs of high educational costs. The question
is now: has the abolition of school fees affected enrollments at school level, if so, how? 

A study was conducted by Borkman in 2009 to evaluate the impact of South Africa’s fee
elimination programme that was targeted at the two poorest quintiles of schools based on
a community poverty score. With regards to methodology, the study indicates the
incorporation of two empirical methods to collect data. The first method used to analyze
data was the fixed effect (FE). The FE estimator took advantage of the panel structure of
the data to identify the treatment effect. The second empirical approach used by the
author in the study was the regression discontinuity. (RD). According to Borkman
(2009:3), the RD was feasible because data on the exact poverty scores awarded to each
school were obtained for a single large province.

The conclusions drawn from this empirical study are that the overall abolition of school
fees has been reasonably effective in increasing secondary school enrollments in
particularly poor communities. Govender, Greenstein and Kgobe (2003:220), think
differently about enrolment dilemmas in the South African context, unlike the situation in
other developing countries in their post-independence period, no massive expansion of
the education system is expected in South Africa. The out of school population is
estimated at 85 000 (about 10% of the relevant group) and the annual rate of growth of
the pupil population are 341 903 teachers, 61% of whom are at the primary level. These
figures translated into a pupil/ teacher ratio of 34:1, across the board, with racial,
provincial and regional variations: the Eastern Cape, Limpopo and KwaZulu-Natal show
the least favourable ratios, especially for African and primary education.

Documented as finding in the study, is that schools in the wealthiest quintiles, which are
quintile four and five, were no hit by high enrollment rates at secondary school level.
 

The study also concluded that, households from middle-class income earners resorted to

enroll their children at no fee schools as a result of credit constrains and other personally
financial dilemmas. Oketcho and Roleston ( 2007) also allude to the fact that the
elimination of school fees in public schools contributed to the massive increase in
enrollments at both primary and secondary school but also indicate that the declaration of
certain schools into no fee schools in Uganda, Tanzanian and Kenya also contributed to
some learner drop-outs. According to Oketch and Rollestone (2007:144), drop-out rates
increase and survival rates fell from 59% to 37%. Wieczorek (2008) and Carter (2008)
believe that the abolition of school fees increased accessibility to education by children
from poor households, a factor that also had a negative impact on education because of
overcrowding which resulted in other schools being under-resourced.

The study only indicated one challenge faced by public schools as a result of the abolition
of school fees, namely, the rise in school enrollments which affect the quality of
education in these schools. The author is silent about the impact of the massive
enrollment rises with regards to resource allocation by the state and the level of parental
involvement at the school as a result of the policy on no fee school. The author is silent
about the impact of the phenomenon on the school’s general performance, discipline and
professional management. The author has made an omission of the impact of the policy
on no fee school for its governance, a factor that is crucial in modern education systems
today. 

Source:

University of Pretoria 

Faculty of Education

THE IMPLICATIONS OF BEING DECLARED A NO FEE SCHOOL
by
Christopher Samuel Nkosi


Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree


MAGISTER EDUCATIONIS


Educational Leadership
Supervisor: Mr Jean W van Rooyen


AUGUST 2011

©  University of Pretoria  

Mozambique Doing Business South Africa

Link : https://repository.up.ac.za/server/api/core/bitstreams/575e75c5-2bbd-4085-b1e8-e2321d2a5416/content 

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