Schoolteachers played starring roles in Trevor Manuel’s recent budget speech suggesting a welcome change in official thinking about how education funding can achieve quality.
Equally applauded were increased allocations to higher education and adult education. But Manuel’s silence on early childhood development and special needs education – which includes the disabled – indicates these have slipped right off the government’s radar.
“Teachers are the frontline of our education system,” he told Parliament, acknowledging that most “do a sterling job under difficult conditions. We pay tribute to them and ask no more than that they continue to serve with dedication and integrity.”
Manuel allocated an additional R8,1-billion to hire additional teachers, teaching assistants and support staff in schools and districts, and to improve salaries. Education Minister Naledi Pandor would determine how this amount would be used, but it would be to “reward good teachers, provide support to poor schools and improve the quality of schooling in general”, Manuel said.
This is a hugely significant policy shift, said Russell Wildeman, Idasa’s education budget analyst. “It’s a recognition that you can’t purchase quality only via inputs at the margins of the budget, such as for libraries or textbooks. You have to make teachers part of the equation.”
Historically, education budgets have suffered from a wildly unbalanced ratio between personnel and non-personnel expenditure, Wildeman said. The former accounted for 90% of spending in the late 1990s, although it has since improved in some provinces.
Quality suffered on both sides of this ratio: officialdom tended to envisage the 90% as a tedious servicing of an excessive wage bill, unconnected with the quality of instruction, while 10% for school infrastructure, textbooks and the like was too small to impact significantly on the overall quality of schooling.
Manuel’s emphasis on extra money to provide support staff is especially significant for poor schools, Wildeman said, as it is here that overstretched teachers must perform administrative tasks, including cleaning, which wealthier schools can hire non-teaching staff to perform.
He stressed, however, that there was no way of knowing whether this shift in thinking at the centre will percolate down to the provinces, where spending decisions regarding schools are made. Pandor expressed concern on a number of occasions last year that provincial spending priorities are often out of kilter with national goals.
This was one caveat in an otherwise “exciting” budget, said Graeme Bloch, education policy analyst at the Development Bank of Southern Africa: “We need to keep up pressure on the provinces to deliver on the resources that Manuel has provided.”
The minister also pledged R700million in teacher bursaries to provide 13 000 new teachers over three years. This is welcome, said Sue Muller, director of curriculum matters for the National Professional Teachers Organisation of South Africa, but well short of meeting the annual need for about 14 000 new teachers.
She also questioned whether salary increases, details of which Pandor is still to determine, would close the huge income gaps between teaching and other professions. “A teacher with 10 years’ experience earns about R10 000 before deductions. House prices average R500 000, giving a bond payment of R5 000 per month. A teacher faces never being able to afford a house.”
Also sounding a note of caution was Jon Lewis, research officer at the South African Democratic Teachers Union: “We have had these promises of increases before, like three years ago, and we’re still fighting over implementation.”
Wildeman said black students, in particular, would benefit from the R600-million Manuel promised in bursaries for further education and training colleges – the old technical colleges.
Pandor has punted the colleges as a key part of the government’s skills development strategy, and this unprecedented injection of bursary funds clearly “shows the sector is being made a priority”, he said.
All commentators agreed that Manuel’s unexpected announcement of an extra R850-million for adult education – a roughly 10% increase – was long overdue, but short on detail. “It’s getting adult education started again, but we need to know what’s intended,” Lewis said.
He also commented that the silence on early childhood development was disturbing. “Maybe it’s budgeted for – but by the time you get to the provinces you find it’s disappeared. And special needs education has fallen off the edge completely.
“But the praising of teachers was a first from any major politician – talking of them not just as a drain on the fiscus but as sources of quality.”