The quintile system in South Africa’s public education sector is supposed to provide appropriate resources to schools according to their needs. But it fails because it disregards real circumstances. Every morning, as the sun rises over Johannesburg’s inner city, thousands of children make their way to overcrowded schools.
Teachers do their best in schools that have become pressure cookers of overcrowding, underfunding and systemic neglect. These schools are caught in a perfect storm of urban migration, bureaucratic inertia and financial shortages. Walk into any inner-city school in Johannesburg today and you’ll find classrooms designed for 30 students now accommodating 40, 50, or even more.
Teachers must raise their voices to be heard over the background noise. Children sometimes sit three to a desk meant for two. During break, the playground becomes a sea of bodies and queues of children wait to use the toilets.
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This crisis has unfolded over the years because of demographic shifts that the education system has struggled to deal with. As Johannesburg’s inner city becomes home to an increasingly diverse population of migrants from all over South Africa and the continent, the schools have taken in wave after wave of new enrolments. Some schools now operate at two or three times their designed capacity, even though the infrastructure hasn’t grown to match.
Part of the reason for this is the quintile funding system. Designed to direct resources towards the neediest schools, this system classifies schools based on the socioeconomic status of their surrounding communities. In theory, it’s progressive and fair, but in practice, for Johannesburg’s inner-city schools, it has become a trap.
Many of these schools are in areas that were once middle-class neighbourhoods, but this is no longer the case. They are classified as affluent schools that should charge fees and receive less government funding. But the children who arrive each morning tell another story: they come from families living in overcrowded flats, from parents working multiple jobs for minimum wage, from homes where there is little spare cash.
Schools classified as quintile 3 or 4 are expected to charge fees and operate with limited state support, even though they’re now serving quintile 1 populations. The scary thing is that the allocations to quintile 5 schools will be far less in 2026. Inner-city schools are trapped between their geographic reality and the demographic truth.
For principals and school governing bodies, this creates an impossible situation. The school desperately needs money for textbooks, maintenance and the basics of education. Yet the families they serve simply don’t have it.
Some schools set fees as low as possible and then watch helplessly as only a fraction of families can pay. Others apply for exemptions for most of their learners, drowning in paperwork while their budgets bleed. A few, driven to desperation, enforce fee payments strictly, knowing this means excluding children.
Getting a school reclassified to a more appropriate quintile should be straightforward, especially because the demographic evidence is clear. But the appeals process is bureaucratic, slow and opaque. Schools must gather extensive documentation, navigate provincial education department procedures, and then wait.
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