School vouchers offer the poorest an opportunity to learn at better schools

Written by Gavin Chait

Universal provision of formative education is considered a basic right in our constitution.  The standard approach, followed by virtually every government in the world, is that they should build schools, staff them, and supply their services at a subsidised price in order to promote education equality.

The surest sign that this is a dismal failure is the astonishing growth in the number of private schools as soon as this is implemented.  And the fact that no South African politicians send any of their own kids to state schools.  Waiting lists at private schools are groaning under the weight of demand.  This entrenches the rich – poor divide and creates a form of educational aristocracy where the children of the rich have greater access to opportunities.

Fee-paying parents flee poorer schools which become ever poorer and less able to serve the needs of their remaining students. 

Governments around the world have responded by offering perverse incentives to failing schools.  Bad, under-resourced schools receive extra money but, since the teachers and staff are not incentivised to improve or penalised for failure to do so, there is no reason to change the status quo.  This often achieves the bizarre end of rapidly increasing education budgets with just as rapidly increasing failure rates.

As good an example of this is South Africa's latest education results .  Despite an increasing budget pass-rates have been falling steadily since 2003.

South Africa has a middle road between pure government owned and subsidised schools, and private schools.  These are the Model C schools where parents take an active role in the school’s governance to ensure participation and standards.  Many Model C schools have become as elite as their private counterparts.

Now government has a bright new idea:  force these schools to take on more non-paying students.  The choice the schools have is to raise fees – in essence punishing those who can afford to pay – or offer a lower standard of care as class sizes increase and resources become stretched.

Parents will respond either by moving their children to private schools and so result in further hardship as the amount of revenue drops; or the schools will go private.

Either way the objective of offering disadvantaged children better access to education fails.

There is another way of solving this problem.  It is by recognising that the purpose is not to subsidise school operations, but the educational opportunities of youngsters.

If the government intends on spending money subsidising education then that cash can be issued directly to learners as a voucher to take to any accredited school to pay their fees.  If the school charges more then the parents have to make up the difference.

The beauty of this system is that it encourages competition between schools to attract learners.  It allows parents the choice of including private schools in the range of places they can send their children.  It should not matter, after all, where children are educated as long as they receive a high standard of care.  Even more importantly, it will attract educational entrepreneurs to open new schools or expand existing ones.

And for any politician who would deny young, disadvantaged learners the opportunity to choose a school best suited for their needs, I pose a simple question.  How many politicians have entirely abandoned government schools and have sent their offspring private?

If the politicians exclaiming the benefits of state-provided education refuse to send their kids to government schools, why should the poor be forced to?

(Originally published in the Cape Argus)

---

< Prev		Next >