How government should invest & provinces should implement on accessible education : an evamix focus on benchmarking & transport

Abstract

In a post-dispensation South Africa, inherited and perpetuated income, spatial and human capital inequalities have fed into the accessibility of education services. Policy responses involve coordinating remedial measures placing access to education at the heart of a nation. Literature intimates that quantitative and qualitative trade-offs are evident in access and mobility to education?especially for public intervention and policy implementation. This paper uses secondary data conceptualise quantitative assessment criteria for evaluating access to education. The novelty of what is reported here is the application of the EVAMIX, a Multi-Criteria Decision technique, to experimentally evaluate, firstly education expenditures of selected countries. Secondly, education expenditures of households at provincial level with a focus on transport realities of provinces in terms of one measure of accessibility. From the experiment it is found that Great Britain?s economic commitment to education far outweigh those of selected countries, South Africa only outperforms India, and is succeeded by Brazil. It is also found that provinces perform in conflicting ways in terms of education expenditure and access to first mode of transport by learners. This places emphasis on implementing education economic policies that balance public sector trade-offs at national level, focusing on higher per-capita investment and at the same time being sensitive to unique needs of each province.