CHAPTER 2
Race, Equity, and Public Schools in the First Decade of Post-Apartheid South Africa
I
n the transition from apartheid to a democratic society in South Africa after the first democratic national election in 1994, the government promised to provide equal opportunities for education to all racial groups and regions (Republic of South Africa 1996a, 1996b). However, as reported in Education Atlas of South Africa (Bot, Wilson, and Dove 2000), there still exist wide variations in major indicators of educational quality across regions. Given the clustered spatial distribution of racial groups in the country, it is not difficult to infer variations in educational opportunities among children across different population groups. In this chapter, I use South African school census data from 1996 and 2000 to assess variations in educational quality of public schools across former population groups and investigate changes in post-apartheid South Africa.
It has been recognized both inside and outside South Africa that under apartheid (over which the African population had no control) African schools— for example, those in the former homelands—were totally inferior to white schools in terms of funding (Kriege et al. 1994; Marais 1995; Crouch 1996). Differences in conditions between African and non-African schools led to corresponding differences in learner achievement, particularly examination scores in numeracy (Case and Deaton 1999). Unless the government actively strengthens its support of former African schools in terms of budget and personnel allocations, in order to narrow apartheid-created differences in educational quality, a vicious cycle of poverty and low-quality education will persist. Children who cannot receive a sufficiently high quality of education are less likely to be engaged in regular employment and are therefore more likely to remain in the low-income class (for example, Case and Yogo 1999). Since they cannot afford to live in well-off residential areas (in many cases, former white areas), which typically have high-quality schools, they are likely to stay in areas with inferior schools. When high residential rents prohibit access to better schools, this cycle will persist, potentially becoming a crucial determinant of the long-term poverty trap for Africans in the country.
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