‘School development fund must be abolished’

GOVERNMENT should introduce a timeline for the abolition of the school development fund (SDF) while analysing what is presently covered, and make budget provisions for schools to cover costs usually covered by it, suggested delegates to the national conference on education.

By 2009, the SDF accounted for about two per cent of all expenditure of education, amounting to N$115 million in the same year.Very roughly, said educational specialist Justin Ellis, the annual personal cost for a rural student would amount to N$1 100 and N$2 100 for a pupil in a town.The annual contributions to the SDF vary considerably between rural and urban schools – from N$2 to N$3 600.The assumed advantages for the introduction of the SDF, he said, was that it would make parents take an interest in the education of their children, who in turn would want to make a success of their school years.In practice, however, a different picture emerged: schools still struggled to get participation from parents in the governance of schools, and disciplinary problems persisted.’The actual advantage is to the State which has been relieved of its constitutional and legal obligation to pay for certain things,’ he proposed.It was also proven that it places limitations on the accessibility of schools to poor population. Figures indicate that 10 per cent of the poorest children of school age are not in school.Enrolment in Grade 1 has similarly shown a decline over a seven-year span until 2009; there was an 11 per cent decline in the number of Grade 1 entrants.’I believe there can be several reasons for this, but the SDF is one of them,’ proposed Ellis, while acknowledging that the enrolment of Grade 1 during 2010 has gone up.Moreover, he said, SDF is contributing to inequality, and do damage to national efforts to achieve Vision 2030.Ottilie Abrahams, principal of the privately-run State-sponsored Jacob Marengo Senior Secondary School, said she fully supports free education, but stressed that Government should then step in to free schools from the burden of having to pay municipal and other costs.Former education minister in pre-independence Namibia, Andrew Matjila, expressed reservations whether the SDF could completely be abolished with poor accounting of Government resources.He said pre-independence schools were free – except for boarding fees – because the South African regime was a ‘very wealthy state’ that flooded schools with all equipment free of charge.’The State catered for virtually everything from Grade 1 to matric [Grade 12], although teachers’ salaries were very low,’ commented Matjila.The repercussions of abolishing the SDF, he cautioned, could mean that the State would have to review its tax regime, which could lead to over-taxing.