When you have to pay for education....

When I went to primary school years ago, I couldn't decide to which one I would like to go. In Switzerland it is the task of the department to divide the pupils into the various primary schools, in most of the cases only concerning  geographical reasons. As I am working with GCU (see my recent entry) at various primary schools in Heideveld, a township of Cape Town, I was wondering about the school system of South Africa. The demographical differences between the different schools is strange. I was surprised by the strong differences between the schools, so I asked some locals about this issue.
They explained me that the reason for this huge differences is the quality of the education. The better a school is, the more have the parents to pay for it. Consequently, not all parents can afford it to send their children to the best possible primary school in their area. The quality differs in the variety of the education: As an example, most of the kids in Heideveld have neither physical education nor music classes. Also the qualifications of the teachers differs from school to school. For this reason GCU provides physical education and other activities like playing chess at the primary schools and helps the pupils to be more focused on their education!