The Persistence of South African Educational Inequalities: The Need for Understanding and Relying on Analytical Frameworks

Abstract

It is acknowledged that educational inequalities persist in South Africa 25 years after the advent of democracy in 1994, but the debate about the causes and solutions to poor education performance continues. Could the education system be fundamentally improved and mitigate somewhat the socio-economic inequalities from one generation to another? This article argues that the debate will benefit from the use of theoretical frameworks about the role of education in society, especially since many analyses do not engage explicitly with theories. This article summarises the theoretical debates to remind scholars about the need to compare and explore the arguments of different theoretical paradigms on the role of education and assist sociology of education teaching. It concludes with analytical examples, which argue that the best explanatory power comes from the post-structuralist theoretical position.