Bloomberg reported this week<\/strong><\/a> that listed private school companies in South Africa have shown great success in 2023, with education analysts forecasting even more growth for the sector as parents turn away from state-run schools.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe private school groups themselves have reported growing demand, and this has been reflected in stocks rallying as high as 38%, beating the benchmark FTSE\/JSE Africa All Share Index by some margin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This comes as South Africa’s public infrastructure and services deteriorate, and many South Africans turn to private companies to source things like electricity, security, healthcare and, indeed, education.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In its report, Bloomberg quoted Anthony Clark, an analyst at Small Talk Daily Research, who said that \u201cas the state fails \u2014 as it (has) in many industries in the last 20 to 30 years \u2014 the private sector picks up where the government falls away.” <\/p>\n\n\n\n
However, Elijah Mhlanga, Chief Director for Communications at the Department of Basic Education – who did not respond to Bloomberg’s queries for the article – has now challenged this characterisation, saying that South Africa’s public education system, while facing challenges, is still thriving.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“The public education system has consistently experienced growth in enrolment over the years, and never a decline,” he said. “The recorded growth in learner numbers in private education and the profits that follow, have never happened at the expense of public education.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mhlanga said that the high demand for space in public schools, particularly in Gauteng – the same province referenced as a case study in the Bloomberg article – is contrary to the narrative that parents have ‘turned their backs on the state system, choosing instead to send children to private schools’. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
He said the growth and demand show that parents in the country still prefer public schools to private schools and that the number of learners enrolled in the former outnumbers the latter 1 to 14, with over 14 million learners enrolled at public schools.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This, he said, shows that the “boom” in private school businesses is happening due to population growth, “not because public education is buckling”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Government has repeatedly argued, using reliable data from international testing programmes, that the quality of schooling has been on the rise, at a rate that is steep compared to what has been seen across the world since international standardised testing began,” he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mhlanga said that challenges in the public schooling system can be linked to unequal levels of learning, and issues raised with reading levels, maths and science are being addressed. He added that South Africa is showing improvements in the international assessments of learning that it participates in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“None of this is to say that everything is perfect or to justify the ongoing inequalities in the system. But we must be able to hold a more nuanced picture of reality that there can both be ongoing problems and improvements at the same time,” he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Simply pointing to the problems and then concluding that the education is among the ‘worst in the world’ is disingenuous.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\n\n\nRead: Big win for private schools in South Africa as \u2018failed state\u2019 deepens<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Department of Basic Education says that a “boom” in private school successes isn’t at the expense of public schools – which it insists are improving.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":644897,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9876],"tags":[26],"class_list":["post-738415","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lifestyle","tag-headline"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/738415","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=738415"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/738415\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":738485,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/738415\/revisions\/738485"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/644897"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=738415"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=738415"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=738415"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}