In May 2016, the South African Constitutional Court ruled unconstitutional the long-term use of default school feeder zones (with a 5 km radius) to govern school admissions in Gauteng province. The ruling drew on an amicus curiae application which argued that the default feeder zones were constitutionally invalid: in the context of a profoundly unequal education system where geography and educational quality are tightly linked, they replicate spatial apartheid and perpetuate racial exclusion. The case highlights the tension between individual schools’ incentives to preserve educational quality through limiting and controlling admissions, and the Gauteng Department of Education’s mandate to ensure universal, equitable access to education for all. The competing incentives of government, schools and parents mean that multiple scales of educational governance intersect at individual schools, and in school admissions policies. As one of the UN’s 2015 Sustainable Development Goals is to ensure universal access to high-quality education, these tensions between scales of educational governance are under increasing scrutiny globally. This paper explores the distinctions and relationship between access to education and access to quality education through the case study of Gauteng, South Africa. We map a range of school-level variables to illustrate the challenges that geography poses to achieving equitable educational access and unpack how, in the context of policy that intends to univeralise access to education, physical location (of schools and children) and scale continue to shape the education that children can access.
