Spot checks at state schools have revealed thousands of underqualified grade R teachers, money siphoned from food budgets to pay for matric farewell events, overloaded school buses and dangerously dilapidated classrooms, the office of the auditor-general told MPs on Tuesday.
Its presentation highlighted the immensely challenging public school environment confronting many pupils, who fare poorly in international tests for reading and maths.
The researchers scrutinised the provision of early childhood development, the national school nutrition programme, pupil transport, construction budgets and school improvement plans in all nine provinces.
Audits revealed that the education department in KwaZulu-Natal had hired 2,200 grade R teachers who did not meet the minimum qualification requirement. At a school in North West, 251 grade R children were accommodated in only two classrooms, and most of the schools the researchers visited did not have safe playgrounds for young children.
“The identified deficiencies threaten access and the provision of quality education of all learners. The foundation phase is also the critical contributor of learner performance in later grades and the deficiencies therefore perpetuate learners’ poor performance,” senior audit manager Joshua Baganzi told members of parliament’s portfolio committee on basic education.
Analysis of the national school nutrition programme, which provides free meals to more than 9-million pupils in SA, revealed poor stock control and unhygienic storage and preparation facilities in many schools. In 10 of the 13 schools visited by staff from the auditor-general’s office, money earmarked for the school nutrition programme was used for other purposes, ranging from matric farewell events to purchasing printers and paper.
Baganzi also drew attention to the scandal in KwaZulu-Natal recently, when millions of children were left hungry because the provincial education department appointed a service provider that failed to provide school meals. These meals often provide the only nutrition children from poor households get for the day.
The auditor-general’s office found poor management of the transport system, with many pupils having to walk long distances or travel in dangerously overloaded vehicles. One of the schools in KwaZulu-Natal had a bus designed to carry 66 seated and 15 standing passengers, but was cramming in 174 children per trip, he said.
Weak management in some schools meant there were no plans to continuously improve the facilities, funds were misappropriated, teachers abused the leave system and data on pupils’ performance was not being captured or analysed, he said.
The auditor-general’s office also examined phase 3 of the Presidential Youth Employment Initiative, which was allocated R6.194bn in 2022/23 to create jobs for 27,000 teacher assistants. Shortcomings in the hiring process that had previously been identified had yet to be rectified, and the scheme was still employing people who did not meet its employment criteria, said Baganzi.
Schools and provincial education departments were not verifying the credentials of successful candidates.
As a result, the scheme was still hiring people who were older than the threshold of 35 years as well as recipients of grants from the National Student Financial Aid Scheme, which supports students at tertiary education institutions.
Correction: October 18 2023
An earlier version of this article incorrectly referred to Joshua Baganzi as a researcher at the office of the auditor-general. He is a senior audit manager.
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