Orientation of the study

Chapter one

Orientation of the study

Introduction

The year 1994 heralded a new era for South Africa culminating in the first democratic elections in April 1994. The Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, Act 108 of 1996, set our country on the road to true democracy. April 2009 saw the fifth democratic elections in South Africa, which mandated government to quicken the pace of transformation in its attempt to move our country towards an inclusive society. Like Janus¹ we need to look back and learn from the lessons of the past fifteen years, focussing specifically on our shortcomings, the shortcomings of a country in transition. These shortcomings will identify areas of development and like Janus we can also look forward to the next fifteen years and beyond.

The South African education system has also undergone change since 1994, the most notable being the promulgation of the South African Schools Act, Act 84 of 1996 which introduced a system of democratic governance into South Africa’s public schooling system. In 1997 School Governing Bodies were elected for the first time for a three-year term

1. Janus – Ancient Roman god represented with two faces; on at the front and the other at the back of his head.

of office – 2009 will see the fifth such elections. The election of School Governing Bodies via the South African Schools Act makes provision for power sharing within a school – power is shared between the school governing body (SGB) and the school management team (SMT), a radical shift from the pre-1994 era, which was characterised by centralised control of our schools.

My ardent interest in financial management (of schools) began when I qualified as a Master Trainer for Schools’ Financial Management in 1999 and after my appointment as a Superintendent of Education in 2002 this passion continued. Both these portfolios found me being involved in the monitoring and evaluation of the management of public schools’ finances with the intention of developing and implementing capacity building programmes. The specific need to conduct this study came to the fore during the Pinetown Education District’s “Adopt-a-School” Project in early 2007 when I served on a District Management Team working in the Inanda, Ntuzuma and Kwa Mashu (INK) schools. During these visits I came face-to-face with the shocking realities and atrocities commonplace in these schools in respect of the management of schools’ finances, namely:

• budgets were poorly compiled or non-existent
• if budgets existed, then variance reports were never compiled
• bank reconciliation statements were rarely compiled
• signatories to the school fund account were questionable
• finance policies and control measures were non-existent
• cheque and cash payments were generally made in the absence of payment authority and supporting documents
• procurement procedures were highly questionable
• petty cash was generally abused
• statutory reports were rarely filed
• books of account were not maintained
• the external auditor generally wrote up the books of account and thereafter conducted the audit
• school fee registers were non-existent and school fees could not be tracked
• stock registers were non-existent