Cuts to school build grants on the cards
MPs’ fears that school infrastructure budgets are to be slashed in finance minister Tito Mboweni’s medium-term budget policy statement on Wednesday, were confirmed by basic education director-general Mathanzima Mweli.
“The budget cuts are very deep. All the [school infrastructure] grants have experienced cuts,” Mweli told parliament’s portfolio committee on basic education on Tuesday.
The medium-term budget is expected to introduce spending cuts across the board, after the Treasury told departments in August to draft plans to slash budgets for the next three years.
The Treasury told departments to look for ways to reduce spending that minimise the effect on service delivery, which means infrastructure spending is likely to be one of the areas hardest hit in education.
Tackling hazardous and undignified school sanitation has been prioritised by President Cyril Ramaphosa, after the deaths of several young children in school pit latrines in 2018. Last March, he ordered basic education minister Angie Motshekga to conduct an audit of school sanitation and devise a plan to rectify the situation. A month later, he launched the Sanitation Appropriate for Education (Safe) initiative, which brought in the private sector.
The audit found almost a third (6,938) of the 23,334 state schools had pit latrines.
The government has several initiatives for tackling the poor state of infrastructure in many public schools.
The provincial schools’ build programme targets basic services and infrastructure, and is jointly funded via the Education Infrastructure Grant (EIG), a ring-fenced conditional grant overseen by the national department and provincial allocations from the equitable share of the budget.
The national department also oversees, the Accelerated School Infrastructure Delivery Initiative, which aims to eradicate dangerous structures and provide basic services.
It is funded through the Schools Infrastructure Backlog Grant (SIBG).
The department of basic education’s chief director for school infrastructure, Solly Mafoko, told MPs that the current focus of school infrastructure programmes is on water, sanitation and building new classrooms. A total of R14.255bn had been allocated to infrastructure spending in the 2019/2020 financial year, of which R10.5bn came from the EIG, R2bn from the SIBG, and R1.7bn from the equitable share.
He highlighted slow spending of the grants in Gauteng, Limpopo and North West, which had spent just 24%, 24% and 20% of their school infrastructure budgets half-way through the financial year. The figures do not include provincial allocations from the equitable share.
He also revealed slow progress in reaching the targets set for this year: by the end of September, 103 of the planned 776 toilet projects had been completed; 91 of the 515 planned water upgrades were finished; and only 158 of the planned new classrooms had been built.
The DA’s Désirée van der Walt called for stiffer penalties for implementing agencies that failed to do their jobs properly.