The Curro group of private schools has been in the news for alleged racism once again. The latest issue was at Waterfall preschool, which Curro this weekend insisted had been cleared up by an independent investigation.
While Curro has tried to assure us that it does not practice discrimination, in 2015 one of its schools – the Curro Foundation School in Roodeplaat – was found guilty of racism after an investigation by the Gauteng education department.
In effect, that Curro school was selling “segregated education” to white parents through the so-called “free market”.
Since then other allegations about discriminatory practices have been made involving other schools in the chain.
This included subsequent claims against Roodeplaat after video footage surfaced of pupils being taken on a racially segregated field trip.
Over the past 20 years market fundamentalists have been promoting the false ideology that free markets can solve the failures of public education.While I am not against private schools as an option for a small segment of society, the idea that for-profit private schools can step in to provide education for millions of children is delusional.
In the first instance, as the 2015 example at Curro shows, for-profit private schools can end up replicating social prejudice and injustice purely to cater to a certain market segment.
Curro, however, remains a well capitalised school brand.
The trouble with many low-fee for-profit private schools, which cater to poor black communities, is that they cut corners to save money.
I have experienced this firsthand, having sent my niece to two popular low-fee private schools in Mpumalanga.
The schools charged us for anything they could, including a spurious thing called “examination fees”.
Uniforms at these schools would be randomly changed every two years, forcing us to buy new items and making it impossible to purchase second-hand uniforms from former pupils.
While extracting as much as they could by charging parents for every possible small item, the schools were paying their teachers very little – most were from other African countries.
Getting any information or details about my niece’s performance out of the schools was near impossible.
School staff were generally rude and seemed completely stressed out. Teachers were not unionised, and the learners had no representation.
I have been told that teachers in low-fee private schools pray for jobs in government schools because they have benefits and dignified pay.
Then there is the fact that these private schools get away with having vaguely defined school “boards”.
The SA Schools Act has a loophole that allows for this.
These schools are not compelled by law to involve parents and the public in governance, so very little monitoring of these private schools goes on.
My challenge was that I could not easily remove my niece from this situation because I wanted her to attend a school away from the social ills of the rural area.
But, in effect, I was not buying her better education, I was buying her social distance from her community problems.
Now the ideologues who promote “free market” solutions will tell you that the low-fee school is at least doing better than the state.
It is not.
These schools often do not have those well qualified teachers who stay on at bad government schools because of the benefits they offer.
My niece’s maths performance deteriorated. I considered taking her from the low-fee school to a township public school because these usually have maths teachers.
While these schools are selling social distance and perhaps a more “orderly” day, the quality of education being offered is equally poor.
Ultimately, no private school chain can cover the educational needs of millions of South African children while it is seeking to make a profit out of it.
Only the state is able to bear the cost of managing and financing an infrastructure to educate all children for the full 12 years that they have a right to basic education...