Equal Education has criticised last week’s medium term budget policy statement for what it said was a failure to provide adequate funding to the education sector. (Madelene Cronje)
Advocacy group Equal Education has criticised last week’s medium term budget policy statement for what it said was a failure to provide adequate funding to the education sector, which would further entrench inequality.
Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana announced his department would double down on the government’s fiscal consolidation efforts by reducing spending from 28.6% of GDP in the 2023-24 financial year to 27.6% in 2024-25.
Analysts said the policy statement showed Godongwana is keen to stick to the same path of fiscal discipline trod by his predecessors, and that the lingering effects of those earlier austerity policies were shaping current fiscal strategies, potentially limiting options for economic growth and social spending.
In a statement, Equal Education said the mid-term budget signalled “treasury and government’s stubborn commitment to austerity budgeting, which aims to limit non-interest expenditure to below revenue figures until at least 2030, undermines critical socio-economic rights enshrined in our Constitution”.
“For the current financial year, the basic education sector faces a R32 billion funding shortfall. This gap is expected to widen to R176 billion by 2027-28, as learner enrollment increases, grade R is made compulsory, and historical backlogs are exacerbated,” it said.
“This year’s [mid-term budget] offered no relief. After the signing of the Basic Education Laws Amendment (Bela) Act, the school system needs to accommodate at least 250,000 additional grade R learners next year, but no additional funding has been provided.”
President Cyril Ramaphosa signed Bela into law in September, making grade R compulsory as the first year of school for learners.
Equal Education said the medium term budget highlighted infrastructure as one of its main pillars but offered little in the way of commitments to fixing school infrastructure backlogs.
“This financial year’s target for the Accelerated School Infrastructure Delivery Initiative was to build 30 new schools and 100 water facilities [but] reductions to the school infrastructure backlogs grant have resulted in one new school and no new water facilities,” Equal Education’s Ayanda Sishi-Wigzell said.
“After adjusting for inflation, the value of the education infrastructure grant will decline by around 3% each year until 2026-27. Talk of ‘South Africa, the Construction Site’ rings hollow to the 1,770 schools that have been waiting for over a decade for the undignified and dangerous plain pit toilets on their properties to be eradicated.”
The Western Cape government has said it will have to reduce the number of teachers in the province by 2,407 next year, because of budgetary constraints, prompting an outcry from teacher unions.
Ahead of the tabling of last week’s medium term budget statement, civic organisations and unions marched to parliament, protesting that budget cuts were killing education and demanding that the government create more permanent jobs.
This week, labour federation Cosatu’s Western Cape secretary, Malvern de Bruyn, told the Mail & Guardian that the “austerity budget” tabled by Godongwana made it “quite clear that they don’t care about the working class”.
Equal Education also expressed dismay at teacher cuts, saying growing classroom sizes would not only worsen learning environments and outcomes, but also dampen learners’ ambitions “to be part of the future education workforce”.
“Austerity damages both our present and our future. The dangers of educational neglect are glaring. The ripple effects of Bantu education are painfully manifest,” it said.
“There is no doubt [about] the connection between the systematic under-resourcing of black schools under apartheid and the triple crisis of poverty, inequality, and unemployment experienced today. The government of national unity’s first mini-budget continues to fail black learners and the future of our country.”