Mail & Guardian (Johannesburg)
David Macfarlane
27 May 2005
Rural schooling is in crisis -- and rural education should be resourced and organised differently from that in urban schools.
"The state's commitment to social justice in all matters and especially to universal access to education ... remains unfulfilled for large numbers of children, youths and adults living in rural areas," says a ministerial committee report on rural education, due for release next week. Former education minister Kader Asmal appointed the non-governmental committee last year.
The report observes that reliable rural data is urgently needed, as existing government databases on education do not provide separate statistics on rural schools. However, millions of children are affected.
"We guess that about 50% of all learners are rural," said Ben Parker, head of the KwaZulu-Natal branch of the Centre for Education Policy Development, who chaired the ministerial committee. Based on Department of Education figures for total pupil enrolment in public schools, this suggests that up to six million learners are rurally based.
The report builds on the findings of the Nelson Mandela Foundation's enquiry into education in rural communities in the Eastern Cape, Limpopo and KwaZulu-Natal.
Released in February under the title Emerging Voices, that report observed: "The relative scarcity of resources, and in some cases the desolation and poverty of rural communities, seriously limits the developmental possibilities that might be achieved through education."
Parents, teachers, pupils and community members speak in the Mandela report of barriers to quality education such as costs, inadequate infrastructure, gender discrimination and violence in schools.
Parker said the ministerial report took the Mandela study as a given and set out to give national and provincial education departments practical recommendations. More than 70 submissions from individuals and organisations such as teacher unions pointed uniformly in one direction -- that rural schools are "special cases warranting special policy attention".
This is a radical departure from the "overwhelming commitment to equality -- treating everyone in the same way no matter what their differences" during South Africa's first 10 years of democracy.
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