Children pay price for state wage hikes

The Western Cape education department has sounded the alarm over deep cuts the Treasury has forced on its budget, saying it has to scale back plans to build schools and, as a result, more children will remain in overcrowded facilities.

Its concerns are mirrored by the rest of SA’s provincial education departments, which are all scrambling to revise their spending plans after the Treasury announced a R1.78bn cut to the school infrastructure budget for 2023/24 in the mediumterm budget policy statement on November 1.

Those direct cuts have been compounded by the budget pressures created by the higherthan-expected wage deal reached by the Treasury and unions after the February budget had been announced.

This created a R37.4bn shortfall in the state’s compensation budget.

On Thursday the Western Cape education department said R716m had been cut from its budget in the last half of the 2023/24 fiscal year due to a R537m shortfall in its compensation bill and a R179m cut to the education infrastructure grant.

As a result, it has been forced to slash the number of new schools it will build in the current year from 21 to nine, and will instead step up plans to build new classrooms at existing schools, constructing 496 instead of 289.

Many Western Cape schools are already very large, so building new schools is preferable to expanding existing ones.

Western Cape education MEC David Maynier said the Treasury has allocated only 64% of the funding owed to the province to cover the increase in the wage bill negotiated for public servants in the current fiscal year. The Western Cape declared an intergovernmental dispute on the issue on Tuesday, saying the unplanned increase in public wages has knocked the provincial compensation budget by R2.9bn, yet the Treasury has allocated only R1.7bn, leaving a significant shortfall.

The personnel-heavy education and health departments are particularly hard hit.

“What makes these cuts particularly devastating is that for the first time ever these cuts were made within the current

financial year and thus take effect immediately when demand for [school] placement is higher,” Maynier said.

By November 22, there were 119,110 children set to begin grade 1 or grade 8 in January 2024 who had been allocated schools. Placements are in progress for the remaining 1,536 spots, he said.

Gauteng released its provincial medium-term budget on Tuesday showing a R229m cut to its school infrastructure budget for the current fiscal year.

Last week Eastern Cape premier Oscar Mabuyane said the provincial education department would lose more than R247m in conditional grants, of which R226m was earmarked for education infrastructure.