Johannesburg — ACCESS to education may have increased dramatically since 1994 but quality is still below what the country needs, according to the latest South African Institute of Race Relations SA Survey.

Last year five times more pupils - more than 500000 - wrote matric examinations than in 1980.

But only 15%, or half the 1980 pass rate, obtained university entrance standard. Western Cape achieved a pass rate of 25%, but Eastern Cape's was only 9%.

Although the pass rate is better at independent schools, SA scored low in an international comparison, despite having older pupils on average.

In a global ranking , SA's school system came behind those of Botswana and Kenya, and way behind Mauritius, the Seychelles and Brazil.

There are more teachers in the system than before, but the number of public schools fell by 220 to 25000 between 2006 and last year. Farm school enrolment fell 60% in 1996-2000 to 256000. University of technology enrolment fell 19% last year.

In 2006, education accounted for 17,6% of total government spending, or 5,4% of gross domestic product. This was higher than in Germany, Indonesia and Ireland , but lower than in Mexico (25,6%), Chile (18,5%) and Thailand (25%) .

There are great disparities between provinces. For instance, in 2005-06, North West spent R6 871 a pupil, 21% more than Gauteng, the country's richest province. This was also 27% more than in Eastern Cape, the poorest province.

The pupil-teacher ratio ranged from 29: 1 in Northern Cape, North West and the Free State to 33: 1 in Eastern Cape, Gauteng and Limpopo.

In 2006, 9% of the 29000 public schools were found to have "very poor" infrastructure. More than 17000 schools in all nine provinces had no computers while 3400 had no laboratories.

About 20000 educational institutions had no libraries while 880 had no vehicle access and 13000 depended on cellphone, rather than landline, communication .

Thousands more had no fencing, burglar bars, security gates or alarm systems.

The larger number of black students has pushed up university enrolment. Africans' university enrolment rose 60% to 451000 between 1995 and 2006. However, there are still proportionally more whites studying key subjects like accounting and engineering .

Even then, a big problem is the high rate of students dropping out. In one group of 120000 first-year university students in 2000, 30% quit in the first year, and only 22% graduated at the end of the third or fourth year.