Compensation takes biggest bite of Education budget

Of this amount, R24,9 billion or 76% is earmarked for compensating employees.

This percentage increases to 84% when conditional grants are excluded: R3,4 billion is allocated for goods and services; R2,9 billion for transfers and subsidies and R1,3 billion for infrastructure.

The MEC made mention thereof that Education is a labour-intensive portfolio and the priority remains to fill teaching posts.The budget furthermore includes conditional grants, R1,45 billion towards the National School Nutrition Programme, R21,2 million for the EPWP Social Sector Incentive Grant, R26,5 million for HIV/aids treatment, R48,1 million for mathematics, science and technology, R32,7 million for learners with severe to profound intellectual disabilities and R2 million towards the EPWP Incentive Allocation.

Other noteworthy allocations:

Norms and Standards for School Funding – Annually, the Minister of Basic Education publishes through the Government Gazette the norms and standards for the funding of public schools, indicating the amount per learner that schools must be subsidised with.

No-fee paying schools (quintile one to three) receive 100% subsidy from the department, while schools in quintile four and five are subsidised at a lower amount.

The amount pays for the schools’ operational costs. In the 2021/22 financial year, the subsidy will be R1 536 per learner at no fee-paying schools. In quintile 4 schools, it will be R770 and for quintile 5 schools it will be R266.

Small schools will be paid a total annual subsidy of R35 598.

E-learning Strategy

An amount of R100 million has been allocated towards the roll-out of E-learning, with R128 million made available from its equitable share allocation resulting in a total budget of R228 million.

E-learning will be rolled out in a two-pronged approach, the first was the successful provision of smart classrooms to 106 schools.

The second approach will be the provision of tablets to learners and laptops to teachers. Given the budget, the E-learning will be implemented in Gr 1, where there’s 142 123 learners and in Gr 8 with 125 645 learners, at a cost of R355 million and R314 million respectively. The department has taken the decision to stagger the provision of tablets to 19 000 learners in Gr 1 and 16 000 learners in Grade 8. The programme will start in quintile one to three schools and ultimately cover all schools when funding becomes available.

Skills Development and Training

In the 2021/22 financial year, the department will continue to train teachers and administrators in critical programmes that the system requires to fit into the new normal, following the lockdown year. The department was supposed to allocate 1% of total personal expenditure, amounting to R249 million for skills development, but due to budget pressures, only R115 475 million could be earmarked for skills development which is inclusive of the percentage that must be contributed to Seta, interns assuming duty on 1 April 2021, in-service teacher bursaries, bursaries for Public Service Act employees and initial teacher education bursaries.

Special Projects

National School Nutrition Programme (NSNP)

The programme provides meals to learners in quintile one to three and special schools. In the 2020/21 financial year, the programme served meals to 1 627 826 learners and 10 374 jobs were created for 10 383 voluntary food handlers.

In the next financial year, the programme will serve meals to learners in 3 705 primary and secondary schools, and in 35 special schools.

Expanded Public Works Programme (EPWP)

In the previous financial year, the department appointed 862 workers. Out of 762 EPWP beneficiaries, 244 were appointed as classroom assistants, 100 as gardeners, 11 as administrative assistants, five as librarians and 502 as school-based monitors for the National School Nutrition Programme.

In the 2021/2022 financial year, a budget of R21 million is allocated for this programme; a marginal improvement from R20,8 million in the previous financial year. In the 2021/22 financial year the department will through this incentive grant, appoint 694 beneficiaries.

Of the 690 beneficiaries, 175 will be appointed as classroom assistants, 471 school-based monitors, 16 administrators’ assistants, 25 sustainable food production assistants and three data capturers.

Infrastructure Provisioning

In the 2020/21 financial year, the department was unable to undertake most of the infrastructure projects due to the Covid-19 and the lockdown regulations especially during level 5.

The implementation date of the projects was pushed back due to budgets having been reprioritised to fund Covid-19 essentials.

In the 2021/22, budget R1,3 billion has been set aside for infrastructure development in both public ordinary and special schools. This will go towards building new schools, upgrading, refurbishment, rehabilitation and renovations of existing infrastructure, including storm-damaged schools as well as the maintenance and repairs of schools. The department plans to undertake major upgrades and additions to 200 schools across all 10 education districts, including 17 schools as announced by the premier in his State of the Province Address.

Water and Sanitation

The Department of Basic Education (DBE) assisted the department with 522 water tanks and mobile toilets for needy schools in the province.

The department is currently implementing a programme for the provision of permanent water and 31 sanitation infrastructure in 215 schools across the province through its in-house technical capacity. Currently, 159 schools out of 215 have been awarded to contractors and are onsite busy with construction. The remaining 56 schools have been re-advertised because contractors turned down appointment letters as a result of their businesses having been affected by Covid-19 pandemic. The DBE has prioritised 203 schools out of 300 to be provided with proper sanitation facilities and clean running water, through the Sanitation Appropriate for Schools programme.