Basic Education or School Going Education for South Africa : Privatization versus the Public Good

Abstract

Good-quality state education is a basic right enshrined in the Constitution. We cannot entrust our schools to unaccountable and undemocratic corporate interests. Public education has developed over more than a century to become a core part of the work of governments, especially because it is very much a part of their democratising mandate in providing a basic human right to all members of society. Nowhere is there an example of a country with high educational outcomes where the provision of basic education has been in private hands. But there is now an increasingly insistent view suggesting that the privatisation of education, whether through high-cost or low-cost private schooling, charter schools or the voucher system, is the solution to the problems of education systems.This view is touted against the egregious weaknesses that face many public education systems and the prevailing view that education is not meeting the demands of the labour market and economy. This paper argues against this thesis and posits that, it is the responsibility of the South African government to provide basic or school – going education. It argues that given South Africa’s apartheid history, there is no case for the privatization of basic education. The authors primarily use the arguments used by Salim Vally and Enver Motala in an edited article on the same subject that appeared in the Mail and Guardian September 27 to October 2, 2013. (Permission was obtained by the principal author to use their article to articulate this view).