At least 30% of senior management posts in provincial education department head offices are vacant, as are 40% of posts in regional, district and circuit offices. In schools, vacancies are at 20%. The Eastern Cape and the Western Cape are both without a head of department.
These alarming staffing figures receive prominence in Minister of Education Kader Asmal’s latest Report on the Provinces to the President. Released in May, the report also highlights the chronic incapacity of provincial education departments to use available funds; widespread failure to provide textbooks at the beginning of the school year; and inertia in provincial planning to improve school infrastructure.
“There is absolutely no doubt that both provincial managements [in the Western Cape and Eastern Cape] have suffered as a result of lack of leadership,” Asmal’s report says. In the Eastern Cape the post of head there has been vacant for over a year.
Vacancies at lower levels mean that “the Free State is operating at less than 30% of its capacity, Gauteng at probably more than 70% capacity and Mpumalanga at approximately 60%”, Asmal says, while the Western Cape is running at about half its capacity.
The report also complains about the quality of information provinces supplied to the national department. Only Gauteng, Mpumalanga and the Free State provided sufficiently clear data on staffing at different provincial levels. Eight provincial education departments massively underspent in the past financial year, with at least R248-million left unspent in Gauteng, the same amount in the Eastern Cape, and R109-million in the Free State.
Underspending in the past financial year was worse than in the preceding year, Asmal’s report observes. Gauteng, the Free State and the Eastern Cape were the worst offenders. The Western Cape was the only province that did not underspend.
In addition to amounts provided in the annual budget, provincial departments also receive donor funds and “conditional grants” (that is, amounts the Treasury allocates for specific purposes). In both these areas Asmal’s report pinpoints serious shortcomings.
Limpopo and the North West did not supply any information at all on donor funding. Since the national Department of Education has records indicating that Limpopo did receive such funding from 1996 to 2000, the province’s “inability to supply this information is alarming”, the report says.
Those provincial departments that did report on donor funding “did not report the level of expenditure. They also did not report on progress made in the implementation of the various projects.” Huge sums are involved here: the Eastern Cape, for example, received R418-million in donor funds, but was one of the provinces that failed to indicate the extent of expenditure.
Conditional grants target four areas: quality improvement and financial management; HIV/Aids; early childhood development (ECD); and improvement of infrastructure. Overall expenditure on these grants improved to 60%, compared with 45% in the preceding year.
But “performance … is quite unacceptable” in expenditure on early childhood development and HIV/Aids, the report says. Gauteng, Mpumalanga, Limpopo and the North West “have either not submitted reports, or worse still, have not spent the funds at all” on early childhood development. Overall expenditure in this target area was a mere 15%.
On HIV/Aids, total spending averaged just under 40% of allocated funds. The Eastern Cape spent only 6% and Limpopo only 16% of their allocations.
The annual bugbear of schools starting the year without textbooks or stationery again plagued 2002. Yet again, “not one province reported 100% delivery of learning support materials to schools before the first day” of the school year.
Provinces have been dragging their feet in formulating plans to improve school infrastructure. Late last year, following the release of the School Register of Needs, which detailed the frequently appalling conditions in which millions of learners attend school, Asmal requested each province to submit business plans for infrastructure development over the next three financial years. “The president also indicated in his speech during the opening of Parliament in February that government will allocate the necessary resources … to ensure that no child studies under a tree,” the report says.
Despite this, provincial departments have “not shown the urgency that is required. The submission of provincial plans … has been very slow.” The Eastern Cape, Gauteng, Limpopo and North West had not submitted plans by the end of March. In one of the refrains of Asmal’s report, “lack of capacity” at provincial level is cited once more as a possible explanation.