Most people know the government introduced free higher education for working-class and lower middle-class families in February. But fewer people know that it slashed school infrastructure budgets to pay for it.
So while some of SA’s youth will be able to go to university and emerge debt free, millions of others, particularly those stuck in rural schools in Limpopo and the Eastern Cape, will face the risk of dying a horrific death by drowning in a pit toilet.
It is a graphic example of a budgetary trade-off. To pay for free higher education — opportunistically announced by then president Jacob Zuma in a political set of circumstances that made it impossible to reverse — officials from the Treasury and the Presidency’s department of planning, monitoring and evaluation pored over the budget looking for R57bn in spending cuts.
As the salaries or the number of teachers, nurses or doctors could not be done away with, and nor could essential spending on medicines or welfare grants, the obvious target was spending on infrastructure.
The education infrastructure grant, used to build new schools, was cut by R3.6bn over the three-year period of the budget. So was the school infrastructure backlogs grant, established to replace mud and asbestos school structures and to provide water, sanitation and electricity. This was about a 10% reduction in planned spending over the medium-term expenditure framework.
When Lumka Mkhethwa fell into a pit latrine and drowned last week the issue of school infrastructure came rushing back to centre stage.
President Cyril Ramaphosa said the government would come up with a plan to eradicate pit toilets; he gave Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga three months to provide him with an audit of what was involved and an emergency plan for how much it would cost.
That the government had just slashed the budget to replace pit toilets went by quietly without mention.
Although Motshekga has said an audit is required, the department does have a reasonably accurate picture of the state of sanitation at schools, the figures for which are available on the department’s website.
Of 23,437 public schools, more than a third (8,679) have some or only pit toilets. Most of these are in Limpopo, KwaZulu-Natal and the Eastern Cape.
Come October, when the appropriation budget is revised in the medium-term budget policy statement, we can expect that the Treasury (with the assistance of the Presidency) will again adjust spending allocations to return some of what has been taken away from schools by raiding some other line item in the budget.
While the trade-off between pit toilets at schools versus bursaries for university students is a stark one, it can be solved. More money for toilets can be found and with a stronger political will and less complacency at the top of government an accelerated programme to replace pit toilets is feasible.
There are other insidious adjustments to the education budget that have been made in recent years that could be more damaging.
For the few who make it into university, only about 50% graduate with a first degree after six years. At technical and vocational colleges the through-put rate is only 10%. It is a case of throwing good money after bad
In its submission to Parliament’s standing committee on appropriations, activist group Equal Education showed how over the past three years the baseline allocation to basic education has been chiselled away.
In 2015, the Treasury had projected that education spending by 2018 would reach R270bn. Instead, the basic education budget for 2018 is R246.8bn. This means education spending will only just keep pace with inflation, despite the infrastructure backlogs and deep inadequacies in teaching and learning that are characteristic of public schools.
In 2017, the international literacy study Pirls showed that four out of five grade 4 children in SA are unable to comprehend what they read.
On the rare occasions that teachers do submit to participating in surveys or tests, the results are scary. One of the most quoted examples was a 2007 study in which 79% of grade 6 teachers had content knowledge lower than the grade 6 and grade 7 bands.
These failings find expression all the way up to university level, where the government has decided to heap enormous resources. For the few who make it into university, only about 50% graduate with a first degree after six years. At technical and vocational colleges the through-put rate is only 10%. It is a case of throwing good money after bad.
A new determination to eradicate the danger of pit toilets at schools is good. What is needed though is to tackle the massive dysfunction of the system as a whole.
• Paton is deputy editor.
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