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BL Premium writes that the government’s approach of granting above-inflation wage increases to teachers without providing the budgets to pay for them is harming the education system by causing widespread hiring freezes and increasing class sizes, with the poorest schools and provinces the worst affected.
This is the key finding of an 18-month research project conducted by Nic Spaull, Adaiah Lilenstein and David Carel of Stellenbosch University. Their hard-hitting paper, "The Race Between Teacher Wages and the Budget", argues that this can’t be allowed to continue: "Wages must be contained, or educational expenditures must rise, but the status quo is not sustainable for the long-term health of the education system." With the increase in learner enrolments factored in, the researchers found that on a per capita basis, real education spending shrank by 2.6% between 2009 and 2018. Put differently, in real terms SA spent R695 less per learner in 2018 than it did in 2009. To have kept pace with wage inflation over the period, real per-learner expenditure would have needed to be R8.7bn higher in 2018. The problem, as the researchers explained, was not that the government granted teachers above-inflation increases, but that it has imposed hard budget ceilings on provincial education departments at the same time, leaving them to square the circle. Provincial departments have attempted to deal with this fiscal pressure by implementing hiring freezes, leaving vacant posts unfilled and allowing class sizes to rise.
- Read the full original of the detailed report in the above regard by Claire Bisseker at BusinessLive (paywall access only)
Get other news reports at the SA Labour News home page