What is the Principals Fund?

The Principals Fund is a not-for-profit company whose purpose is to build strong schools by helping low-resourced schools in South Africa generate long term incremental income.

Build Strong Schools.

Principals, Management, Senior Leaders, Teachers and Staff build strong schools.

The Principals Fund enables them by helping to generate incremental income for their schools.

We achieve this by 

• building the financial systems for the school
• Increasing the schools income through the Lottery Programme, the School Alumni Programme, and various corporate and sponsorships programmes; and
• Securing the schools long term income through a separated non-profit investment trust

And while we use the vehicle of a Non-Profit Company, we are not a charity. Our services are fee charging for the school, but subsidised by corporates as much as possible. Any excess income is returned for the benefit of the partner schools.

Why is this approach relevant?

Over the long term, school wealth and school educational performance are very closely correlated. Nic Spaull from Stellenbosch University reflected this conclusively in his paper, “Poverty & Privilege: Primary School Inequality in South Africa”, (International Journal of Educational Development, Volume 33, Issue 5, September 2013, Pages 436-447).

The bi-modal distribution of performance according to wealth requires little explanation. Better resourced schools are able to provide better facilities, better environments for learning, more support, better teaching support and pay teachers supplemental salaries, amongst other things.

Our goal is to help schools move, over time, from the lower quartiles to the upper quartile by progressively improving their income and supplementing the parents’ school fees.