Poor schools in four provinces have been underfunded for textbooks and other needs, and one is not able to fill vacant teacher posts, after the National Treasury slashed the budgets of provincial education departments.
In some cases, schools have to find the money to pay teachers.Budget cuts experienced by the provincial education departments have affected the North West (a cut of R1.3bn), Western Cape (R2bn), Free State (R1.6bn), Limpopo (R3.1bn) KwaZulu-Natal (R6.5bn), Eastern Cape (R4.4bn) and Mpumalanga (almost R2.6bn).
The cuts have also seriously affected the buying of furniture by education departments as well as teacher replacements, particularly in KwaZulu-Natal, where educators who have retired, resigned or died have not been replaced.
KwaZulu-Natal’s education MEC, Kwazi Mshengu, told teacher unions this week the province could afford to pay only 82,964 of the 85,730 teachers in the system and that it would need an extra R1.2bn to pay the remaining teachers.
A senior teacher at Newcastle High in northern KwaZulu-Natal said the governing body was paying the salaries of five substitute teachers who replaced five teachers who left earlier this year.
Thirona Moodley, KwaZulu-Natal CEO of the National Professional Teachers’ Organisation of SA (Naptosa), described the department’s failure to replace teachers as “a catastrophe”.
“Schools are battling to collect fees because of Covid-19 but they are forking out the little money they have, with some even paying R2,000 a month for an educator.”
Eastern Cape education department spokesperson Mali Mtima said “the area of curriculum funding, especially textbooks, stationery and school furniture, is severely affected by the budget cuts”.
“Transfers to schools to pay its accounts for municipal services and also for maintenance have also been badly affected.”
According to the national norms and standards for school funding gazetted by basic education minister Angie Motshekga, in March provincial education departments had to subsidise no-fee schools (quintile 1-3) to the tune of R1,466 per pupil for this year. But schools in the Eastern Cape, KwaZulu-Natal, Mpumalanga and the Northern Cape are receiving only R870, R955, R977 and R1,247 per pupil, respectively. In the Eastern Cape, KwaZulu-Natal and Mpumalanga the quintile 4 and 5 schools or so-called wealthy schools have also been short-changed.
The funding for a pupil attending a quintile 5 school is R254, but schools in the Eastern Cape are receiving only R151, KwaZulu-Natal R179 and Mpumalanga R168.
Schools are battling to collect fees because of Covid-19 but they are forking out the little money they have, with some even paying R2,000 a month for an educator
— Thirona Moodley, KwaZulu-Natal CEO of the National Professional Teachers’ Organisation of SA
Western Cape, Free State and Limpopo have also been affected by budget cuts, but they are paying no-fee schools R1,536 per pupil.
Between 30% and 60% of the subsidy allocated to each pupil is earmarked for learning and teaching support materials (LTSM), and the balance towards municipal services and maintenance.
Belinda Brown, chair of the governing body of Bethvale Primary in Gqeberha, said 70% of the more than 500 pupils in grades 1-3 don’t have readers for English and Afrikaans first additional language, so teachers rely on photocopies.
“The problem is when the teacher makes reference to colour, for example a red apple, the learner won’t be able to identify the colour because the copies are in black and white.”
A teacher from a school in Phoenix, north of Durban, spoke of her frustration at pupils not having textbooks in isiZulu.
“I was issued with two language books for learners and three copies each of the two prescribed textbooks for literature. Comprehension activities are so hard to teach and it’s unfair on the learners.”
Provincial education spokesperson Sihle Mlotshwa said the province had to cut its budget for travel and accommodation for co-curricular activities by about R400m because of the Treasury cuts.
He said that 60% of the allocation to schools was earmarked for the purchase of LTSM, and 40% for basic running costs.
North West education spokesperson Elias Malindi said the province budgeted R30m for school furniture but there are still some schools without any. Northern Cape education spokesperson Geoffrey van der Merwe said the R10.5m budget for school furniture was reserved for new schools and the refurbishment of furniture.
Free State education department spokesperson Howard Ndaba said budget cuts forced the province to reduce its salary bill and operational budget.
His Limpopo counterpart, Tidimalo Chuene, said the provincial education department had to reduce its Covid-19 budget by R417.8m.Western Cape education department spokesperson Bronagh Hammond said despite the budget cuts it managed to maintain service delivery levels.
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