Minister of Basic Education Siviwe Gwarube and her team have a huge task to transform basic education. Yesterday, Minister Siviwe tabled the 2024/25 Budget Vote 16 to the National Council of Provinces in Cape Town.
In her opening speech, the minister said, “The budget vote takes place in unique circumstances in our country. We are unique in that we are operating within the Government of National Unity environment, which is important and historically significant because it reflects the will of the people.”
The department has been in the spotlight for all the wrong reasons, and the signs show that the quality of education has been decreasing over the years. According to the African Institute of South Africa, out of the number of learners enrolled in grade 1, only half make it to grade 12.
The state of infrastructure in South African schools paints a painful picture; more than 3,300 of South Africa’s 23, 000 public schools will still use pit toilets in 2024. In early February, Parliament gave the Department of Basic Education 60 days to outline how it would eradicate pit toilets.
In 2020, the former Minister Angie Motshekga stated that the pit toilets would be eradicated by March 2022; in 2023, the Minister said that 2022’s deadline was not met due to the National Treasury budget during the 2023–24 financial year.
Built One South Africa Deputy President Nobuntu Hlazo-Webster says, “In parliament, through the work of portfolio committees, we are holding relevant people to account.”.
She further adds that there’s been little to no accountability for those responsible for rediculating pit toilets.
The seventh administration will focus on the five key priorities.
- Firstly, we will intensify efforts to improve access to and quality of early childhood development, recognising that the formative years are critical to laying a strong foundation for our children’s education journey.
- Secondly, we are steadfast in improving literacy and numeracy skills across all phases of schooling.
- Thirdly, we will increase efforts to improve access to and the quality of inclusive education for learners in our most vulnerable communities and learners with special education needs. It is our duty to ensure that our education system is accommodating and supportive of all learners.
- Fourthly, we will intensify efforts to improve access to and the quality of training and professional development opportunities available to our school management teams and teachers. Teachers are the backbone of our schooling system. Given the many and varied challenges that our teachers and principals are required to respond to in their daily work, we need to ensure that they are supported to achieve the quality learning outcomes we so desperately need.
- And finally, but certainly not least, we will be working tirelessly to improve the safety and quality of schooling environments for our learners and teachers.
The provincial 2024–25 financial year budget allocations are as follows:
The Eastern Cape Department of Education is allocated forty-two point four billion Rands (R42.4 billion), an increase of 3.0%.
The Free State Department of Education is allocated seventeen point nine billion Rands (R17.9 billion), a reduction of 1.8%;
The Gauteng Department of Education is allocated sixty-five point eight billion Rands (R65.8 billion), an increase of 3.9%.
The KwaZulu-Natal Department of Education is allocated sixty-three billion Rands (R63 billion), an increase of 0.2%.
The Limpopo Department of Education is allocated forty billion Rands (R40 billion), an increase of 2.5%.
The Mpumalanga Department of Education is allocated twenty-six point four billion Rands (R26.4 billion), an increase of 4.2%.
The Northern Cape Department of Education is allocated eight point one billion Rands (R8.1 billion), a reduction of 5.8%.
The North West Department of Education is allocated twenty-two billion Rands (R22 billion), an increase of 2.1%.
The Western Cape Department of Education is allocated thirty-point-eight billion Rands (R30.8 billion), an increase of 1.5%.
Therefore, the total budget allocation for the DBE and the nine Provincial Education Departments combined in the 2024–25 financial year is R324.5 billion, an increase of 3.4% from the 2023–24 revised estimates.
