CRIS Scientific Seminar 2022-2023

Friday, October 21th 2022, 11:30 am
Sciences Po (1, Place Saint-Thomas-d'Aquin) - Room K011

School Segregation in Post-Apartheid South Africa

Rob J. Gruijters
(Sociologist, Assistant Professor, REAL Centre, University of Cambridge)

School integration is an important indicator of equality of opportunity and racial reconciliation in post-apartheid South Africa and remains a prominent topic in public and political discourse.
Nonetheless, the extent to which schools have desegregated since the end of apartheid in 1994 remains unclear.

This study therefore provides a comprehensive overview of current patterns of school segregation by race and class in South Africa. It is based on the 2021 Annual School Survey—an administrative dataset covering all South African schools—and the 2019 TIMSS school survey.

Using indicators for unevenness, exposure, and diversity, we report very high levels of school segregation along racial as well as socioeconomic lines in South Africa. White students almost exclusively attend former White schools, have little exposure to the low-income Black majority, and are vastly overrepresented in elite public and private schools.

Based on these findings, we argue that the political settlement that emerged in post-apartheid South Africa facilitated the hoarding of educational opportunities by the White minority and, to a lesser extent, the new Black middle class. In South Africa and other contexts with under-resourced education systems, elite capture of the few high-performing schools serves to reproduce race and class privilege.

Registration is mandatory. Thank you.

Rob Gruijters' homepage: https://www.educ.cam.ac.uk/people/staff/gruijters/