FUNDING BASIC EDUCATION

The fact sheet analyzes the funding of basic education in South Africa, highlighting a real-terms decline in per-learner spending from R17,822 in 2010 to R16,435 in 2017. It identifies critical underfunding in school infrastructure, sanitation, and special needs education, while noting that provincial mismanagement and inaccurate data collection further exacerbate the crisis. The authors call for an end to budget austerity and the implementation of a rights-based funding model to ensure all learners have access to essential resources and safe facilities.

• Real spending per learner in South African basic education decreased by 8% between 2010 and 2017, falling from R17,822 to R16,435. This decline is attributed to budget allocations failing to keep pace with rising birth rates (2003–2008) and teacher compensation costs increasing faster than average inflation.
• Five provinces failed to meet the minimum per learner non-personnel funding requirements in 2017. This underfunding is particularly critical for no-fee schools, which cannot supplement budgets through fees to pay for textbooks, furniture, electricity, and maintenance.
• The Education Infrastructure Grant (EIG) has been reduced, with the 2019/20 budget being R1 billion lower than in 2015/16. Additionally, the Accelerated School Infrastructure Delivery Initiative (ASIDI) has shown poor performance, with only 46% of targeted schools receiving sanitation upgrades since 2011.
• Provincial education departments suffer from a crisis of capacity and accountability, exemplified by the Limpopo Department of Education, which recorded R194.5 million in fruitless and wasteful expenditure in 2017/18.
• Education for learners with disabilities is severely underfunded; for instance, the KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) department of education allocates only 2.3% of its budget to special needs education. In KZN, the Department of Basic Education estimated in November 2015 that 76% of the 182,153 children with disabilities were not receiving any schooling.
• Access to school transport remains a significant barrier, with 68.1% of approximately 14 million learners walking to school according to the 2017 General Household Survey. Despite government commitments, no scholar transport grant existed in the budget of the 5th Parliament.

APA

Institute for Economic Justice (n.d.). FUNDING BASIC EDUCATION. https://iej.org.za/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/IEJfactsheet-Funding-Basic-Education.pdf

Chicago

Institute for Economic Justice. FUNDING BASIC EDUCATION. n.d. https://iej.org.za/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/IEJfactsheet-Funding-Basic-Education.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=Institute for Economic Justice |title=FUNDING BASIC EDUCATION |url=https://iej.org.za/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/IEJfactsheet-Funding-Basic-Education.pdf |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{instituteforeconomicjusticendfunding, author = {{Institute for Economic Justice}}, title = {{FUNDING BASIC EDUCATION}}, institution = {Institute for Economic Justice}, url = {https://iej.org.za/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/IEJfactsheet-Funding-Basic-Education.pdf}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }