Despite President Cyril Ramaphosa’s signalling of early childhood development (ECD) as a key priority in his State of the Nation Address, the 2024 Budget failed to allocate the funds necessary to fulfil all children’s rights to quality ECD services.
This is according to the Campaign for Real Reform for ECD which noted the ECD subsidy remains pegged at R17 per child per day for the sixth year in a row.
“During the same period, food prices have increased by about 39%.
This means that in 2024/25, it will be even more difficult for ECD programmes in poor communities to provide a safe environment, nutritious food, decent working conditions, and age-appropriate stimulation,” the campaign said in a statement.
“Worse, the subsidy only reaches about 35% of eligible children who are attending an ECD programme. Over 1 million children attending close to 50,000 unregistered township and rural ECD programmes do not qualify. These programmes require government support to meet registration requirements. The R58 million cut to the infrastructure component of the ECD conditional grant in the 2023 adjustments budget left only R44 million available to support unregistered ECD programmes in 2023/24. The allocation of R157 million in 2024/25 rising to R161 million in 2025/26 is welcome but much more needs to be done to ensure that provincial education departments are capacitated to provide the support that is required to register ECD programmes on a mass scale.”
The campaign said it was concerned that the provincial equitable share, which funds provincial education departments and contributes heavily to the total ECD subsidy budget, is to be reduced in real terms for the fourth year in a row.
“We cannot keep expecting the ECD workforce – mostly black women, 90% of whom are paid less than minimum wage – to nurture our youngest children without proper state funding or support.”
Section27 said while the proposed cuts to basic services this year may on the surface appear less devastating than those presented in Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana’s 2023 Medium-Term Budget Policy Statement, the 2024 budget will likely further constrain basic education and health care delivery across the country.
Section27 said South Africa will spend nearly R320 less per learner in the coming year.
“Consolidated Basic Education spending has received a 3.4% increase from 2023/24’s R313.7-billion (following further spending reductions owing to cost containment measures) to R324.5-billion. This translates to R23 105 per learner per annum, a R770 increase from last year’s R23 420 in nominal terms. However, if we factor in the effect of a projected CPI-inflation of 4.7% for the 2024/25 period, we may see an actual investment to basic education of about R309.2-billion instead and actual spending per learner of about R23 105, a 1.2% real cut of R315. This will result in less resources for South African public schools to adequately fund, for example, the provision of scholar transport, stationery, and learning materials.”
The Education Infrastructure Grant (EIG) - which provinces rely on for school infrastructure needs - received a funding allocation of R13.7-billion from last year’s R12.3-billion, Section27 said.
“Although this 11.4% increase may appear positive as it is well above inflation, this allocation is effectively a reversal of last year’s 11.5% nominal cut to the EIG. Worse, the Cabinet has approved a R611-million cut to the EIG and a R1.2 billion cut to the school infrastructure backlog grant (SIBG). These budget cuts constrain funding available to, amongst others, urgently eradicate unsafe pit latrines in schools.”
Cape Times