Managing school finances by school governing bodies (SGBs) in South African secondary schools has proven to be a challenge that has several negative consequences for education, infrastructure, and other resources. The purpose of this article was to assess the efficiency of financial management systems (FMSs) in selected schools in the Amathole…

In this article I report on the findings of an empirical study conducted to show the merits of integrating equitable learning by members of the South African School Governing bodies (SGBs) in managing the physical and financial resources. Within the interpretivist paradigm and utilising a qualitative descriptive phenomenological design, the data…

Equity and redress, in and through education, are fundamental commitments of the new South African democratic government that ensued in 1994 after a brutal and protracted history of colonial and apartheid segregation and oppression denied the majority black population the fundamental right to equitable and quality education. A raft of ambitious…

The disparity in the socio-economic status of South Africa has forced the government to adopt a funding policy for public secondary schools. The policy is based on funding schools considered to be poor because they are in poverty-stricken communities. Most of these schools lack infrastructure, and physical and financial resources to be run…

Early childhood development and education (ECDE) is devolved in Kenya, which means that each of Kenya's 47 counties budgets for and implements ECDE independently. Kenya provides two years of preprimary education to children ages four and five. Given scarce resources, constructing facilities and hiring teachers are often principal considerations…

The government's educational reforms since 1994 have focused on equity and redress. Redressing historical imbalances and achieving equity are fundamental policy mechanisms in attempts to restructure South African education. This aspiration is demonstrated in many education policies including the National Norms and Standards for School Funding…

Equitable funding of public schools to reduce the disparities in education inherited by the post-apartheid government of South Africa in 1994 has become a priority. The Amended National Norms and Standards for School Funding (ANNSSF) required the ranking of schools into one of five quintiles of which Quintile 1 represents the poorest schools and…

The paper has a twofold structure and focus. The first part is an examination of the funding challenges facing African universities resulting mainly from public finance difficulties, and the second part is a case study of how some Kenyan and South African public universities have attempted to mitigate resource dependence difficulties through…

The paper examines the extent to which sub-national public officials are efficient in delivering basic education services and argues that technical inefficiencies, especially in the management of public funds for education, could potentially contribute to poor education service delivery in South Africa. A conceptual framework is proposed to show…

The government has made great strides in redressing past imbalances in education through the National Norms and Standards for School Funding (NNSSF) policy that focuses on equity in school funding. This NNSSF model compels the state to fund public schools according to a poverty quintile system, where poor schools are allocated much more funding…

Within the context of the school finance literature, the concepts of equity and adequacy raise a number of complex definitional and pragmatic issues. The purpose of this paper is to clarify those issues and to use those concepts to evaluate the recent policy proposal called Weighted Student Funding (WSF). Though WSF contains some equity-enhancing…

This article investigates budget monitoring and control in township schools in South Africa. The enactment of the Schools Act 1996 revolutionized school financial management in South Africa, making it part of the drive for democratic school governance. School governing bodies had to be established, whose responsibility it became to manage finances…

The performance management of higher education institutions is a major challenge for many countries. Such institutions deliver mostly a social as opposed to an economic return, and cannot be evaluated using the same approach as is applicable to a business enterprise. Many countries have developed rather complex and elaborate approaches to this…

These self-instructional resources have their origins in a workshop on the Costs and Financing of Open & Distance Learning which took place from 6-10 August 2007 in Gabarone, Botswana. The workshop was sponsored by the Commonwealth of Learning (COL) with the overall aim of building capacity to plan, negotiate and manage appropriate financial…

In almost every dimension, South Africa has undergone dramatic changes since the end of apartheid. Public education in South Africa has been completely transformed from an amalgam of separate and highly unequal educational systems, defined in terms of the race and place of residence of students, into a unified system based on the principle of…