Tough spending decisions taken by government loom large in education, which sees deep budget cuts to poorly performing programmes. This may delay plans to expand student accommodation and improve school infrastructure.
Plans to expand free school meals to more needy children have also been scaled back.
Treasury plans to reduce its non-interest expenditure by R156bn over the next three years, and education is among the biggest casualties, with a R7.1bn cut to its baseline over the medium term.
The lion’s share of these cuts are to infrastructure spending, but the allocation to financial aid for students attending technical vocational and training (TVET) colleges has also been scaled back due to lower than anticipated enrolments in the sector.
The revised infrastructure spending plans will affect both higher education institutions and schools.
“These reductions are expected to cause revisions to infrastructure plans and delays in project completion,” Treasury said in its Budget Review.
Treasury has slashed R2.3bn from the infrastructure allocation to TVET colleges, and R621m from university infrastructure.
It has also cut R1.85bn from the education infrastructure grant and reduced the school infrastructure backlogs grant by R122.8m, which is likely to delay progress in ensuring all schoolchildren learn in safe classrooms with appropriate sanitation facilities.
DA MPL Yusuf Cassim said the government was cutting the future of schoolchildren by slimming down the infrastructure budget.
“A responsible government would've invested more money into one of the most struggling sectors in the country, not cut down. Looking at issues such as mismanagement of funds and backlogs rather. This is the last place Treasury should look at for budget cuts,” he said.
The national school nutrition programme grant has been cut by R123m over the medium term, which is not expected to affect meals for children in quintile 1-3 schools, but will delay plans to extend the service to children in quintile four and five schools.
Consolidated government spending on basic education will not keep pace with inflation, growing on average by just 3.8% a year over the medium term. The basic education budget is set to rise from R262.5bn in 2019-20 to R293.2bn in 2022-23.
The budget documents cast harsh light on the department of higher education & training’s progress in expanding access to SA’s 50 TVET colleges, with Treasury cutting R900m from the National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS)’s budget for TVET student bursaries over the medium term due to a lower than expected intake at these institutions.
Buffalo City TVET College student and chair of the EFF Student Command, Nasiphi Picane said they “reject” treasury's decision to cut down on the NSFAS budget as a number of students face financial exclusion at the institution.
“R900m is a lot of money. We reject what is being done by the finance minister because as it stands we students are financially excluded by NSFAS, that have not yet been funded. If this continues we would then call for a national shutdown.
“We are not going to allow it, we will try to fight it. We would also call for TVET colleges around the country to rise up and fight this battle together,” she said.
Picane said Treasury should be “adding” more money instead of cutting down funds.
Picane said no students at the college had received their NSFAS monies for the year.
The higher education & training department has long struggled to meet the National Development Plan’s goal of reversing the current situation in which more school leavers enrol at universities than TVET colleges.
NSFAS expects to fund one million university students and 870,000 TVET college students over the medium term. Its budget allocation is set to increase at an average annual rate of 7.3% over the period, from R33bn in 2019-20 to R40.8bn in 2022-23.
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