Can Decentralisation of Structures and Devolution of Governance Power Enable an Effective Response to COVID-19 Disruptions? Lessons from the South African Education System

Globally, scholarship around decentralised structures and devolved governance powers has been credited for ‘giving power to the people’. Power to make governance decisions goes with ownership of those decisions and accountability to multiple stakeholders. Therefore, it is not surprising that when South Africa became a democracy, it adopted some form of decentralisation of management and governance structures and devolution of power as part of its transformation agenda. However, through its own policies, the Department of Basic Education (DBE) has not successfully implemented this agenda in any meaningful way. In this conceptual paper, I examine various education policies which I argue have, paradoxically, promoted and entrenched inequalities of the past, and continued to disempower many schools. I also draw from current local and global literature to show that while decentralisation has succeeded to some extent, devolution of power has not. Concomitantly, schools with real devolution of governance powers stand a better chance of providing an effective response to disruptions caused by the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic.