Education

                   (1)  No, the Provincial Minister has the discretion to amend a school’s quintile based on a recommendation from the  department. 

                        The Directorate Management Accounting (DMA) is responsible for applying the amended National Norms and Standards for School

                        Funding (NNSSF), published in the Government Gazette 29179 of 31 August 2006 to determine the quintile of schools in the province.

                        The criteria to rank and place schools are stipulated in these Norms and Standards.

Policy guidelines indicate that the poverty of the community surrounding the school will correlate with the poverty of school community. This guideline has not worked because the dynamic nature of enrolments, specifically the fact that thousands of learners do not attend their closest public school but commute to other public schools for a variety of reasons Data on surrounding communities is thus a poor indicator of the socio-economic status of learners in many schools.

The socio-economic status of communities has also changed over the years.

Owing to these challenges many appeals have been received from schools requesting a reclassification of their quintile and/or fee status.

A school may apply for a deviation where the school believes that it warrants special consideration. The WCED is obligated to apply a fair and transparent process for dealing with these applications.

• Schools that wish to apply must submit an appeal in writing through their relevant district office to the Member of the Executive Council of Education (MEC) to challenge the quintile allocation and/or fee status.
• WCED schools requesting a review of the school’s poverty score due to exceptional circumstances is not limited to new schools only. The exceptional circumstances to be taken into account are that the learners served by the school are all from poor communities and not representative of the poverty score of the community surrounding the school.
• The WCED will perform a financial viability assessment before making a recommendation to the Member of the Executive Council of Education (MEC) for approval.     

The changing of a school’s quintile could have a substantial financial implication for the department in terms of norms and standards and therefore is subject to availability of funding that is reprioritised for this purpose

I have repeatedly said that the quintile system, a national policy, is failing our children. 

Over 40% of Western Cape learners are to be allocated in no-fee schools according to the 2017 National Poverty Distribution Table. The WCED has complied with this policy and where possible, have out of our own allocation supported over 220 Quintile 4 schools by making them no-fee schools, given the dire circumstances they are facing.

But then in Provinces such as Limpopo, which is supposed to allocate 77% to quintiles 1-3, they are reporting as high as 96% of learners in these schools.

Similarly, the national average of Q1-3 schools is 76.8% - far exceeding the prescribed 60%.

Earlier this year I received a letter from the National Minister asking me to address the quintile allocations of schools that are suffering. 

I have taken that as consent that we do not comply with the national policy, and expect that we will receive the additional funding for norms and standards. However, indications are that we will not receive additional funding in fact quite the contrary, which will limit our ability to finance additional school quintile re-allocations.

In the interim, we will continue to actively promote a pro-poor approach, specifically supporting quintile 4 and 5 schools serving poor communities. These schools could also supplement their financial resources  by submitting claims for Compensation for fee exemptions, as well as top-up funding being made available where the total of their N&S per learner allocation and school fees are less than the no-fee threshold.

(2) Statistics on requests for the review of schools’ quintile categories in the province since 2014:

Expansion of the ‘no fee’ school programme in 2014 to include Q4 and 5 schools, and resulted in 2016 schools becoming ‘no fee’ schools, by applying for ‘no fee’ status. This number has increased to 224 schools in 2019.

The table below represents the statistics of Quintile or Fee Status applications received since 2017.