South Africa's unintended experiment in school choice: how the National Education Policy Act, the South Africa Schools Act and the Employment of Educators Act create the enabling conditions for quasi-markets in schools

Policy, Politics and Poverty in South Africa

“…For these reasons, and others, schools in richer neighbourhoods also tended to attract the better teachers. The fact that parents can exercise a degree of choice as to where their children go to school, because South Africa does not have strict school zoning, serves to buttress criticisms of schooling as 'neoliberal' (Woolman and Fleisch, 2006).…”

Key Dimensions of Effective Leadership for Change: A Focus on Township and Rural Schools in South Africa

“…This affected the capacity of these schools to be selective in their intake as was the case with some of the township schools where the beginnings of a quasi-market in education was more visible, i.e. there was beginning to emerge a greater 'landscape of choice' for parents and pupils both with the township and beyond (Tikly and Mabogoane, 1997;Woolman and Fleisch, 2006 for a discussion of marketization in the South African context).…”

Schooling choice in South Africa: The limits of qualifications and the politics of race, class and symbolic power

“…As Woolman and Fleisch (2006) note, however, the move toward schooling choice in South Africa-that is children not attending their local school-was an 'unintended experiment' that arose from late apartheid and post-apartheid reforms. Under pressure to cut public spending and wishing to reform apartheid incrementally, in the early 1990s the flailing apartheid government encouraged white schools to introduce fees and become more autonomous.…”