Durban - Pupils enrolled at public schools in KwaZulu-Natal will have less spent on them by the cash-strapped provincial education department than children elsewhere in the country.
The subsidy per pupil, which the KZN Education Department pays to public schools, will be less than the national target again this year.
The Basic Education Department has increased the amount by which public schools ought to be subsidised this year to R1 116 for no-fee schools, as published in the Government Gazette last week.
But, while the increase comes to just R57 more than last year, the head of the KZN Education Department, Nkosinathi Sishi, said they could not afford R1 116.
Instead, children at KZN no-fee schools will have R965 spent on them. This is meant to pay for water, lights and maintenance, learning materials, and even chalk.
Last year, the provincial department spent R932 a pupil on children enrolled in no-fee schools, whereas certain other provincial education departments were able to afford the full R1 059 a pupil.
Teachers’ union leaders are distressed about the shortfalls, saying the consequences are that school municipal accounts are in the red, and that no-fee schools remain impoverished. No-fee schools are those in quintiles one, two and three – the poorest in the rankings.
Quintile four and five schools are better resourced. Quintile four schools ought to receive R559 a pupil this year, and quintile five schools R193, but those in KZN will be allocated R522 and R179 respectively.
Of the 6 000 KZN schools, 22% are quintile one. No fees are mandatory at nearly 66% of KZN schools.
By comparison, 40% of Western Cape schools and nearly 47% of Gauteng schools are no-fee schools.
Those two provinces have the highest ratio of quintile five schools, and the lowest ratio of quintile one schools.
The Western Cape Education Department said on Wednesday that it would spend the full R1 116 on non-fee-paying pupils this year.
Gauteng is expected to be able to do the same, but could not confirm this on Wednesday.
The KZN Education Department has in recent months diverted money meant to be spent on new school buildings to pay employees. It had also intended to use money earmarked for pupil and teacher support material (which included textbooks) to pay salaries, but the KZN Treasury vetoed such a move.
Sishi told The Mercury that while the subsidy to no-fee schools would increase by only 2.5% this year, there was “no way” he could go beyond that.
He said the department was hoping to forge partnerships with private donors and business.
His budget priorities for this year were paying the subsidies, financing transport for subject advisers, and providing textbooks and other learning materials.
Sishi said there was nowhere to save money by making cuts, and this was why they wanted to rope in the private sector.
Allen Thompson, deputy president of the National Teachers Union (Natu), argued that the department could save by trimming positions at head office.
“The underfunding of schools is unjustifiable. Why does the department want to take from the poor?” Thompson railed.
However, Nomarashiya Caluza, the head of the SA Democratic Teachers Union (Sadtu) in KZN, argued that the provincial education department needed to be provided a bigger budget by the national government.
She said smaller subsidies to schools meant poor teaching and learning materials, and buildings and equipment which could not be maintained.
Basil Manuel, president of the National Professional Teachers Organisation of SA (Naptosa), pointed out that even at the lower amount of R965 a pupil, the subsidies paid to no-fee schools were substantial.
“If a no-fee school has 1 000 pupils, that comes to nearly R1 million. But think about your school in Chatsworth or Phoenix which is categorised as quintile five, but serves a community with a very low income base. With the subsidy they are receiving (R179) they cannot pay the water and lights and owe hundreds of thousands of rands to the municipality,” Manuel said.
In November KZN Education MEC Peggy Nkonyeni appointed an independent team of law and finance experts to probe how her department spent its money.
Nkonyeni vowed to get to the root of why it consistently failed to pay suppliers on time, mistakenly paid salaries to ex-employees, and incurred R2.68 billion in irregular expenditure. The report is expected at the end of next month.
The sentiment among the MPLs who sit on the education and finance portfolio committees of the KZN legislature is that while the budget the department was allocated by Treasury was insufficient, there was money being wasted.
The Mercury