The education sector is one of the biggest beneficiaries of the additional R180bn that became available after Treasury recorded higher than anticipated tax revenue, with an extra R57.1bn set aside for schooling and tertiary education over the medium term.
Of this, R32.6bn is earmarked for the National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS), which provides bursaries to students from poor households who attend university or technical and vocational education training colleges, and R24.6bn is set aside for provincial education departments to tackle shortfalls in their compensation budgets.
However it is not entirely good news for the basic education sector, as the additional allocations come on the back of deep spending cuts in previous budgets, and will not be enough to prevent some provinces having to cut posts, said Treasury.
The wage bill for teachers is set to rise by just 1.9% over the medium-term expenditure framework, and will result in fewer teachers and larger classes in some provinces, said Treasury in the Budget Review. Provincial education departments spend 77% of their budgets on compensation.
Fewer teachers could have catastrophic consequences for the education department’s plans to help pupils make up for lost teaching time during the coronavirus pandemic, which severely disrupted schooling and led to huge learning losses. Schools closed on March 17 2020 and when they re-opened several weeks later, pupils were only permitted to return to class on alternate days to comply with regulations on social distancing. Rotational learning only ended in February this year.
From 2022-23, early childhood education moves from the social development department to the basic education sector, resulting in an increase of R3.7bn to the baseline over the next three years.
Consolidated government expenditure on basic education rises from a revised estimate of R284bn in 2021-22 to R298bn in 2022-23, before dipping slightly to R297bn in 2023-24 and then rising again to R301bn in the outer year.
Treasury said the increased funding for NSFAS would support current bursary recipients from families with an annual income of less than R350,000, and to fund the next cohort of first-year students. But it warned that any shortfall in funding for bursaries for these students would have to be covered by the department of higher education & training, by cutting spending on other programmes.
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