{"id":218233,"date":"2018-01-08T07:50:39","date_gmt":"2018-01-08T05:50:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=218233"},"modified":"2018-01-08T13:03:51","modified_gmt":"2018-01-08T11:03:51","slug":"big-changes-on-the-cards-for-south-african-school-uniform-prices-report","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/business\/218233\/big-changes-on-the-cards-for-south-african-school-uniform-prices-report\/","title":{"rendered":"Big changes on the cards for South African school uniform prices: report"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Competition Commission investigations into the R10 billion school uniform industry has found anti-competitive behaviour between a number of schools and uniform suppliers.<\/p>\n<p>Speaking to\u00a0<strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.iol.co.za\/the-star\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">The Star<\/a><\/strong>,\u00a0Competition Commission spokesperson Sipho Ngwema said that the investigation was at an advanced stage and that an announcement would be made in the coming weeks.<\/p>\n<p>The Commission&#8217;s <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/business\/148119\/148119\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">findings<\/a> <\/strong>are expected to\u00a0reduce the cost of school uniforms countrywide, after it was found that a number of schools have entered into exclusive agreements with a single supplier, limiting accessibility and driving up prices.<\/p>\n<p>According to\u00a0Ngwema, some of the findings so far include:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Over a third of private schools and\u00a0former Model C schools were found to have\u00a0exclusive agreements with school uniform suppliers. Of these, 87% of private schools and 53% of former Model C schools have just one exclusive agreement.<\/li>\n<li>The majority of schools which have entered into exclusive agreements for the supply of school uniforms had not done so through open tenders across all provinces.<\/li>\n<li>These contracts had existed for a number of years, with the earliest contract being made\u00a0in 1974.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The Commission is also likely to enforce a\u00a0circular issued by the Basic Education Department in May 2015 which\u00a0stated that school uniforms should be as generic as possible, so that that they could be obtainable from as many suppliers as possible.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><strong>Read:\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/lifestyle\/217575\/these-are-south-africas-20-most-expensive-schools-in-2018\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">These are the 20 most expensive schools in South Africa in 2018<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Competition Commission investigations into the R10 billion school uniform industry has found anti-competitive behaviour.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":123451,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9872],"tags":[1879,26],"class_list":["post-218233","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","tag-competition-comission","tag-headline"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218233","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=218233"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218233\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":218313,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218233\/revisions\/218313"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/123451"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=218233"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=218233"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=218233"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}