ABSTRACT Using the lens of school finance reform, this thesis analyses the progress towards equity in public schooling in post-apartheid South Africa. It distinguishes between equality and equity and argues that that redress, positive discrimination or differential distribution must become part of a meaningful definition of equal education. This thesis utilises recent quantitative data and empirical methodology to explicate the patterns and typology of inequality in public schooling in one province in post-apartheid South Africa, and to deepen our understanding of the construct and application of equity within that milieu. It does this by establishing a key equity indicator, per capita expenditure, for each of the approximately 1900 schools in Gauteng in 1999 and 2002, and by carrying out various school-level analyses on this data. This approach quantifies inequity and progress towards equality, and establishes a broader set of variables and correlates with which to comprehend school finance equity. This is particularly significant because data of actual school-level expenditure as an outcome of merging various databases did not previously exist for Gauteng province, nor did an understanding of the role of private income in differentiating public schooling, particularly on the basis of fees. For the first time, the actual expenditure for each school in Gauteng is established, allowing an assessment of the variability of financing in public schooling. The disaggregated analysis illustrates that the race-based hierarchy of school finance expenditure has been replaced by a new typology of schools based on new categories of privilege and disadvantage. After eight years of post-apartheid education, an important achievement in the public schooling sector is convergence or equalisation in state expenditure. Differential distribution, a notion of equity which includes what is socially just, has been slow to develop. Moreover, while old racial patterns of distribution have shifted, private inputs into public schooling change the picture of “sameness” to one of substantial differentiation. An emerging feature is the evidence of intra-race differentiation, illustrated by the growing spread of expenditure within former African schools. There is also empirical evidence that the emerging education system in postapartheid South Africa has continued to favour the deracialising middle class, despite policy intentions which promote redress for the poor. Unequal education still continues, bur for a different set of reasons. At an empirical level, the research shows that while there has been significant progress towards same spending on average, specific type of schools have benefited more or less. There are policy and management explanations for this. Equity as differential distribution is yet to be achieved. At a methodological level, the study shows both the feasibility and utility of using disaggregated approaches and the ingredient method for fiscal research. At a conceptual level, the study shows the need to go beyond existing categories when exploring equal education, to look at the newly privileged and the newly disadvantaged. This contributes to our understanding of a more complex typology of public schooling in South Africa.