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The poorest schools in the Eastern Cape are to receive an additional R872.5-million in learner subsidies after the Legal Resources Centre in Makhanda discovered they were being underfunded and threatened the Eastern Cape Department of Education (ECDOE) with legal action.
The Legal Resources Centre in Makhanda discovered that no-fee schools were receiving less than half the funding they were supposed to get from the Eastern Cape Department of Education (ECDOE). The LRC then embarked on a nationwide road trip, visiting 95 urban and rural schools in all nine provinces. They discovered that the national per-learner budget targets were not being met in KwaZulu-Natal, the Free State and, especially, the Eastern Cape.
The LRC advised the ECDOE that reducing the budgets violated learners’ rights to education, human dignity and equality and discriminated against children in the province. In January, the ECDOE sent a memorandum to schools advising them the budget cuts were being implemented due to financial constraints.
The ECDOE then made an about-turn. At a principals’ meeting in Gqeberha on 3 April, the ECDOE announced that revised budgets would be sent to schools. This decision was confirmed on 21 April by the ECDOE, and an additional R872.5 million had been made available. However, the ECDOE has already failed to keep a promise to distribute revised budgets to schools in the week of 24-28 April, making it difficult for schools to plan.
Ntsika principal Madeleine Schoeman said since 2020, her school had tried many avenues unsuccessfully to fight for their school budgets before turning to the LRC. “How provincial officials expected schools to sit back and accept the inequity of the paper budget of 2023/4 is beyond my understanding,” she said.
