Group items tagged

South Africa's education and finance ministers are being taken to court over poor standards at state schools. The BBC's Karen Allen investigates the education crisis and why some parents in Eastern Cape province are opting to send their children to private schools despite the cost. "We are not a flashy family - I'm just an ordinary kid," says Simanye Zondani, 17, as he pores over his maths homework in the subdued light of his home. Since his parents died, his aunt has given up her smart "bachelorette" flat in Queenstown and opted instead for a house in the township. Continue reading the main story “Start Quote We used to have good results, but we are short of maths teachers [and] science teachers” End Quote Khumzi Madikane Head teacher at Nonkqubela Secondary It means she can now just about afford the £700 ($1,100) to send her nephew to private school. Five thousand children, most of them from black families on modest incomes, are switching to independent schools annually. The quality varies, but in Gauteng province alone, South Africa's economic hub, more than 100 new schools have applied for registration in the past year. It is a response to a sense of failure in the state sector, argues Peter Bosman, the principal of Getahead High School, the low-cost private school which Simanye attends. "Parents want consistency and quality," he says - not with a sense of schadenfreude but resignation.

The irony is that significant numbers of parents who send their children to private schools are themselves teachers in the state sector.

"We used to have good results, but we are short of maths teachers, science teachers and when staff look at our facilities they decide not to come here," head teacher Khumzi Madikane laments.

GARISSA, Kenya, 12 September 2011 – Dekha Mohamed Noor, 15, has not seen her family for more than a month. At the end of July, after schools closed for the August holidays, they sent her to live with a relative in Garissa, a bustling commercial hub 165 km west of her home village, Modogashe. The drought in north-eastern Kenya and much of the Horn of Africa had decimated their livestock, throwing the family into a desperate scramble for survival.

These new arrivals are placing enormous strains on local resources in host communities. Abdinoor Hussein, head teacher at Dekha’s new school in Garissa, Yathrib Primary School, says class sizes have ballooned from 50 to an average of 92 pupils, and the school’s 10 teachers are having a hard time coping with the surge

This week, with schools across Kenya reopening for the new term, Dekha joins thousands of other children from drought-affected areas who will not be returning to their former schools because they have migrated to other, better-off districts.