Educor to provide 20 'affordable' private schools

By Tarryn Le Chat
29 October 2006

South Africa is to get 20 ‘affordable’ private schools in the next 10 years, says the country’s largest private education provider, Educor.

Managing Director Hennie Louw said the sites for the first two schools would be announced shortly.

Louw said for the past two years they had been investigating the opportunities to build affordable private schools that would allow parents to pay for the same fees as former Model c schools.

Costs at SA’s top private schools start around R3 000 a month while Educor’s school fees would be between R 1000 to R2 000 a month.

Classes would have a maximum of 20 pupils. These costs would vary according to grade and pupils’ subject choice.

Educor calculated that it would cost about R30 million to build a 13-grade school – grades 0-12 – so the venture would be expensive, but not as costly as SA’s most elite schools which would cost R60-75 million to build from scratch.

These schools would be dual medium, English and Afrikaans and each grade would have four classes.