No-fee schools fulfill our commitment to the people of South Africa to introduce free compulsory education. At no-fee schools parents are not required to pay school fees.

No-fee schools were first introduced voluntarily in 2006 and then by law in 2007. What this means is that quintile one and two schools (40% of learners) were no longer allowed to charge school fees. In 2008, there were 5 million learners in 14,000 no-fee schools.

This year, in addition to the first 5 million no-fee learners, there will be another 2 million no-fee learners in 3,165 voluntary no-fee schools (in quintile three). Therefore, there will be 7 million no-fee learners (60% of all learners) in 17,194 no-fee schools out of a total of 26,742 schools (64% of all schools).

Now I think this is a remarkable achievement and the enormous number of principals, parents, and teachers who write to me each week think so as well.

So I was surprised to read in the Sunday Times on 22 February, “Schools in suburbs swamped”, about a report that appeared to find “the poor believe that no-fee schools offer inferior education”. As I began to read the report it became clear to me that the headline and the sub-heading was misleading and the report says nothing of the kind.

In fact, the report, which was prepared by the Alliance for Children’s Entitlement to Social Security (ACESS), found no-fee schools had immensely improved the financial situation of poor schools. In the Western Cape, for example, allocations to quintile 1 schools increased by 123% between 2005 and 2007.

“Every one of the 13 no-fee schools that participated in the qualitative research received a greater allocation per learner as a no-fee school than the combined amount they had previously received (from fees and school allocation) as a fee-paying school.”

The ACESS report concludes that the no-fee school policy has had a positive impact on the income of no-fee schools.