Traditionally, the independent school sector in South Africa has been perceived to be “white, affluent and exclusive”. An associated perception is that independent schools offer a higher quality of schooling than public schools. This report interrogates these perceptions and shows them to be either incorrect or too simplistic. It presents findings from an analysis of the Education Management Information System (EMIS) and Senior Certificate (Grade 12) examinations data relating largely to the ability of independent schools to offer quality schooling for the historically disadvantaged.

The aim of this paper is twofold. Firstly, it uses results from international assessment programmes to examine systematically the degree to which countries, in particular developing ones, have seen improvements in learner performance and may therefore offer clues to how to bring about such improvements. Secondly, the paper zooms in on a few developing countries which have taken measures to improve learner performance where these measures seem interesting from a South African perspective.

A key aim of the current report is to provide information relating to inequities in current per learner spending, across provinces, quintiles, levels of the system (primary and secondary) and individual schools. The emphasis of the report is on current spending per learner, not capital spending. focussing on funding per learner reveals important patterns which should inform policy debates.

This analysis attempts to clarify what the trends have been with respect to fees paid, something which is not easy to see in the earlier reports because estimates of global figures, drawing from the thirteen fee categories (or ‘bins’) used in the GHS questionnaire, are not calculated. Moreover, the current analysis makes the distinction between public and all schools clearer, as well as the difference between the primary and secondary levels. How GHS fee figures compare to data from a 500-school sample dataset from 2009 is moreover explored, as are differences between GHS fee data and those of the Annual Survey of Schools (ASS) datasets of the DBE.

This report provides an update on indicators such as number of employees in the nine provincial education departments, average employee costs and learner-educator ratios. To a large extent it follows approaches and formats seen in the 2015 review of remuneration produced by the Department of Basic Education (DBEor the Presidential Remuneration Review Commission.