Schools in South Africa, as elsewhere, reflect society's political philosophy and goals. The earliest mission schools aimed to inculcate literacy and new social and religious values, and schools for European immigrants aimed to preserve the values of previous generations. In the twentieth century, the education system assumed economic importance as it prepared young Africans for low-wage labor and protected the privileged white minority from competition. From the 1950s to the mid-1990s, no other social institution reflected the government's racial philosophy of apartheid more clearly than the education system. Because the schools were required both to teach and to practice apartheid, they were particularly vulnerable to the weaknesses of the system.

Under apartheid the education system was racially structured with separate national departments for whites, Coloureds, Asians, and blacks outside of the bantustans. Ten separate education departments were accomplished within the bantustans. Although government spending on black education increased greatly in the late 1980s, at the end of the apartheid era in 1994 per capita expenditures for white pupils were still four times higher than expenditures for blacks; spending on education for Asians and Coloured people was closer to spending for whites.