Johannesburg - The funding policy spelling out how much money each school will receive from the government this academic year has been gazetted.
Public schools are divided into five quintiles, with poor schools having a low quintile ranking; better-resourced schools have a higher ranking.
Schools with the lowest quintile rankings receive more funding and higher-ranked schools received less. All schools in quintiles one to three are no-fee schools; 60 percent of the country’s pupils fall under this category.
This year, these schools will receive R1 116 for each pupil,up from R1 059 last year.
Quintile four schools will receive R559 compared to last year’s R503 and schools that are in quintile five will receive R193 for each pupil.
It is illegal for no-fee schools to demand school fees from parents, but parents are welcome to make voluntary contributions towards school funds if they wish to do so.
Fee-paying schools sometimes struggle to get payment from parents. Those that want to be classified as no-fee schools can apply for this status at their provincial departments of education.
The Western Cape has the highest number of well-resourced schools, with 31.7 percent of the province’s schools falling into quintile five, according to the Department of Basic Education’s national poverty distribution table. It is followed by Gauteng with 31.4 percent.
Limpopo has the highest number of poor schools, with 28.2 percent of its schools in quintile one. Limpopo also has the lowest number – 8 percent – of quintile five schools.
Eastern Cape has the second highest number of quintile one schools (27. 3 percent), and 11.4 percent of its schools are quintile five.
Western Cape has the least number of quintile one schools, with only 8.6 percent of its schools in this ranking. Of Gauteng’s estimated 2 200 public schools, just more than 1 200 are no-fee schools.
These cater for about 64 percent of Gauteng’s state school pupils.
Pupils in the lower quintile schools receive additional support such as the school nutrition programme, which provides a meal a day to pupils.
Until late last year, schools in quintiles four and five could also apply and be incorporated into the school-feeding scheme.
Even though these were fee-paying schools, they were forced to operate as no-fee schools because many parents could not or did not pay fees.
This year, however, following a directive from the Department of Basic Education, fee-paying schools will no longer benefit from the school nutrition programme.
The national department insisted that the Division of Revenue Act, which states that schools in quintiles four and five do not qualify for the nutrition programme, be strictly implemented.
Prior to this directive, the money provincial departments had used to fund feeding schemes at fee-paying schools came from a grant intended to assist the poorest schools. In effect, the departments had defied the Act because the money was not used for its intended purpose.
The Star