The head of parliament’s portfolio committee on basic education has warned that a schooling catastrophe is looming due to the budget cuts forced on provincial education departments.
Committee chair Joy Maimela said on Friday all provinces would be invited to give the committee detailed presentations on how budget cuts were affecting them.
There are definitely going to be challenges in teaching and learning considering that our teacher-learner ratio is not even where it should be
— Joy Maimela, chair of portfolio committee
“We want them to give us an idea of how bad is the situation ... To consider budget review mechanisms that exist in the PFMA (Public Finance Management Act). There are definitely going to be challenges in teaching and learning considering that our teacher-learner ratio is not even where it should be.”
The government has agreed to a 7.5% wage increase for teachers and other public servants for 2023/2024, but did not increase provincial budgets accordingly.
Now provinces are scrambling to adjust by making billions of rand in cuts. Teaching posts, early childhood development programmes and scholar transport are among the items likely to be pruned. The Western Cape has announced it will have to cut 2,400 teaching posts at the end of the year.
Gauteng, where there is a “forever increasing large numbers of pupils”, will also be hard hit, Maimela said. The province, which has the highest number of pupils, recently indicated to Maimela’s committee that it may be forced to cut costs in areas such as early childhood development programmes and scholar transport.
The KwaZulu-Natal education department told the Sunday Times this week that it may be unable to pay municipal accounts for schools and service providers within the stipulated 30 days due to a R4bn budget shortfall.
Education MEC Sipho Hlomuka said implementing the wage agreement was costing his department R2.7bn. "[It] is costing the department R194m per month to fund compensation [of employees], which depletes the operational budget.”
He said KwaZulu-Natal already had 8,242 “unaffordable vacant posts” and that the 7.5% pay hike meant another 2,716 posts could not be funded. This means KwaZulu-Natal will be short of about 11,000 teachers.
“The department is left with little-to-no funding for ... the payment of fixed operational costs, municipal accounts, payment to suppliers within 30 days, procurement of learner support material and effecting transfer payments to schools,” Hlomuka said.
He said the inability to fill teaching posts would lead to “insufficient educators in classrooms and support staff at schools”.
Hlomuka said it was unfortunate that the salary increase agreements were reached at national level “without funding, and provincial departments are expected to fund the increases from their baselines”.
We have worked so hard to employ more teachers and build more schools, so a reduction in posts is the opposite of what we are trying to do. But our department has been placed in an impossible position
— David Maynier, Western Cape education MEC
Asked how Gauteng was addressing the budget issue, education spokesperson Steve Mabona said it would be “fully discussed at the National Treasury in due course”.
Education expert Mary Metcalfe said the provinces may be unable to add new teachers.
“The pressure on provinces which have larger numbers of quintile 1, 2 and 3 [public schools not permitted to charge school fees], will increase even more,” Metcalfe said. Provinces with more quintile 4 and 5 schools, which were better able to raise funds through school fees, might fare better.
She said the budget cuts were “a thorny issue [but a] reflection of South Africa’s current [economic] reality” and the problem was unlikely to go away soon.
Maimela said the budget cuts would hamper plans to enhance the curriculum through the introduction of subjects such as coding and robotics.
“It means we wouldn’t be able to hire teachers to teach those subjects to ensure that our learners are equipped with skills of the 21st century,” she said.
It would be “catastrophic” if the provinces that were already struggling did not receive special attention.
“Of course Limpopo, Eastern Cape and KwaZulu-Natal are provinces where you wouldn’t want to cut any budget because they need it the most as they have not reached the standard you want, but we need to consider Gauteng, and we may face a situation that learners can’t be placed due to overcrowding,” Maimela said.
On Friday Western Cape education MEC David Maynier wrote to teachers and principals in the province, saying the decision to cut posts had not been taken lightly.
“I recognise the pressure that the decision has placed on our principals, as you will be responsible for managing the impact of the reduction in posts at your schools. We will do everything that we can to reduce the administrative burden on our schools and teachers during this time,” wrote Maynier.
“We have worked so hard to employ more teachers and build more schools, so a reduction in posts is the opposite of what we are trying to do. But our department has been placed in an impossible position.”
Maynier said the province “received 64% of the cost of the nationally negotiated public sector wage agreement”.
“Our department has had to make over R2.5bn in non-personnel budget cuts. But we still face a R3.8bn shortfall over three years,” he wrote.
The Eastern Cape department of education said on Friday it faced a shortfall of R685.5m for the medium term. Education MEC Fundile Gade said his department would engage with the provincial treasury “to ensure that the shortfall is monitored throughout the medium-term expenditure framework”.
The North West education department said it faced a R700m shortfall due to the cuts. Spokesperson Mphaka Molokwane said school-based posts would not be affected by the cuts as they had been exempted from ongoing cost-containment measures.
Limpopo education spokesperson Matome Taueatsoala said: “The MEC is still consulting stakeholders ... She will issue her declaration after this thorough, ongoing process.”
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