The Eastern Cape education department has shortchanged government schools of billions of rands since 2020 and a civil society organisation and some schools based in Makhanda have had enough.
The Makhanda Circle of Unity and school governing bodies of Ntsika Secondary School, Tyantyi Primary School and Hoërskool PJ Olivier, assisted by the Legal Resources Centre, have resorted to court to ensure schools are paid out what they say they are owed.
In March, they will argue in the Makhanda High Court that it should declare as unlawful the provincial department’s decisions to fund schools at a rate drastically below the national department’s mandated minimum rate.
It wants the department to pay every school in the province at proper funding levels backdated from 2023.
If successful, the department will have to dig deep to properly fund all schools both retrospectively and in future.
In 2023 alone, it is estimated it withheld more than R900m that the schools say it should have paid out in that financial year.
According to court papers, the national basic education department mandates a minimum per-learner allocation to schools in the various quintiles.
But, since 2020, the provincial department has ignored the minister, instead withholding or “retaining” billions it should have paid schools.
Until 2020, the department paid the full per pupil amount. But since then, it has paid less every year.
The Eastern Cape and KwaZulu-Natal education departments are the only two “delinquent” departments.
Every other provincial education department has paid schools in line with the national department’s minimum mandated amount per pupil.
According to court documents, instead of funding increasing on a year-by-year basis, schools are now getting far less than they did in 2020.
Makhanda Circle of Unity programme director Sisesakhe Ntlabezo reveals in his founding affidavit that in 2020, the province’s poorest schools were allocated R1,204 per pupil.
By 2023, it had dropped to just R815.13.
In 2020, the provincial department paid 78% of the minimum recommended amount.
Non-fee-paying schools (quintile 1 to 2 schools) were entitled to a minimum of R1,544 per pupil, but received only R1,204.32.
In the 2021/2022 financial year, the minimum per-pupil allocation was R1,466.
Just R766.32 per pupil — less than half the recommended minimum — was paid.
In other words, the province’s poorest children at the poorest no-fee-paying schools suffering from the “deepest inequalities in education” were allocated about half of the minimum national government amount deemed necessary to provide educational essentials, court papers say.
It did so without consultation and zero explanation to affected schools, Ntlabezo said.
In 2022/2023 it again funded schools to the tune of about half the national department’s mandated minimum.
Court documents say that for the 2023/2024 financial year, the department indicated in budgets sent to no-fee schools that they would be funded at R607.90 per pupil despite the minimum per-pupil allocation being R1,602.00.
In other words, it intended funding the poorest schools at 38% of what was deemed “minimally adequate”
Schools were not consulted or given reasons, nor did the department devise a plan to make up the shortfall, as required by national school norms and standards.
By this time, some schools in Makhanda had enlisted the Legal Resource Centre, which wrote to the department demanding an explanation.
While the department did not respond, the language for underfunding schools changed.
It informed them in May 2023, more than a month into that financial year, that it would fund them at the full minimum per-pupil allocation.
But there was a catch. It said it would “retain” almost 34% of these budgets (almost R1bn) to fund resourcing of curriculum and other teaching and learning-related needs.
This vague terminology explains nothing, the applicants say.
“The ECDOE’s decision was to continue to massively underfund schools, but to reframe its decision as being one which purported to meet the minimum funding requirements,” they say in court papers.
It says the May 2023 decision was unconstitutional, unlawful and invalid and should be set aside.
In December 2023, it indicated it would follow the same course for the 2024/2025 year.
Except this time, it said it could afford only R1,231 per pupil at no-fee schools, despite the national government determining that they required a minimally adequate amount of R1,627.
To add insult to injury, the department indicated it would again withhold almost 34% of the already underfunded amount of R1,231 per child.
In other words, it would pay R815.27 per poor child — about half the minimum required.
Affidavits from the three applicant schools indicate the dire result of the underfunding.
Schools cannot afford to pay their electricity, water or other municipal bills.
They cannot afford basic maintenance at schools. Even toilet paper.
Court papers say 71.6% of Eastern Cape pupils attend the poorest schools, where fees may not be charged.
Some 80% of parents of children at these schools are unemployed. The schools rely 100% on government funding.
In her affidavit, acting department head Sharon Maasdorp admits that her department is required to follow a range of national laws and policies including teacher allocations and individual school funding
But she refers to departmental documents which indicated budget cuts to her department of more than R1bn between 2020 and 2023 which the documents suggest are the “root cause” in its reduction in the per-pupil allocations.
It also says it had to “bail out a few schools” which had not paid municipal bills.
On top of that, Maasdorp says to the extent that there had been shortfalls in cash transfers to schools, these had been “catered for” by things such as centralised LSM (learning support material) provisioning.
She says the relief sought, including that the department retrospectively pay schools their allocations for two financial years as well as going forward, would have “far-reaching” implications for the Eastern Cape education department.
The applicants point out that it is telling that national education minister Siviwe Gwarube failed to provide any affidavit to confirm Maasdorp’s claims.
The applicants say it means that the court would therefore never know the minister’s position.
The applicant will argue in March that the terrible impact of underfunding on schools was a “manifest violation of the right to basic education, and the rights to equality and dignity”.
“The ECDOE has wholly undermined the best interests of the poorest children in SA, and has only entrenched the deplorable conditions of the poorest and historically most marginalised schools.”
National Association of School Governing Bodies secretary-general Matakanya Matakanye expressed concern over the litigation.
“In some schools, you find that the schools are highly overcrowded, schools do not have furniture … water, electricity.
“Schools also have to look into the infrastructure and all those things, they have to be paid by the school.
“It is unacceptable that when the norms and standards decided to give them this amount per child, they cut it,” he said. — Additional reporting by Mandilakhe Kwababana
Daily Dispatch
