The Quest for Educational Equity in Schools in South Africa

Abstract

Abstract The quest for educational equity in South Africa takes its impetus from the country's transition to democracy in 1994. The country faced the challenge of overcoming deep systemic inequality-both racial and class-based-caused by three hundred fifty years of colonialism and apartheid. The African National Congress undertook a process to equalize the educational system and expand opportunities for students. Significant progress has been made in addressing issues of race, class, and gender in the thirty years since 1994, but a combination of factors has both reproduced and amplified old inequalities and disparities, particularly those of space and race, and introduced intense new socioeconomic inequalities overlain with challenging cultural and linguistic markers, such as the dominance of English and the loss of indigenous language capacity. Two elements have been pivotal: stubborn legacy effects of apartheid such as poverty in a context of a weakening economy; and complex and contradictory arrangements made at the transition in 1994 that have left privilege, predominantly but no longer only white, largely intact. The COVID-19 pandemic sharpened these inequalities.