School Community Integration Pilot Project - Department of Education

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A comparative analysis of education expenditure in Eastern Cape schools – November 2004 7. CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS 7.1. Conclusions This study has established a number of findings from analysis of provincial and Eastern Cape public school indicators and expenditure: National and provincial funding for education • Following a difficult period of very limited available resources from 1997/98 to 2000/01, the Eastern Cape has been able to significantly increase expenditure on public schooling in recent years, primarily due to high real growth above the rate of inflation in national to provincial transfers and in allocations to education within the province. • This trend is however unlikely to continue as the growth rate of transfers from national will decrease and population and enrolment trends are likely to give the Eastern Cape a declining share of national transfers to provinces. • Since 2001/02 rapidly increasing expenditure on social grants has decreased the share of expenditure on education and health in all provinces. The Eastern Cape has however reduced the share of expenditure on education more rapidly than in any other province, from 40,6% in 2001/02 to 34,7% in 2003/04. • Capital expenditure on addressing school infrastructure backlogs and nonpersonnel non-capital spending on learning resources and school services are equally vital areas of spending to educator provisioning. It is important to maintain a balance between these three broad categories of expenditure. Prioritising resources in education • In comparison to other provinces the Eastern Cape has a favourable learner:educator ratio and a high learner:classroom ratio indicating high school infrastructure backlogs. The Eastern Cape is a province of small schools with the second lowest average enrolment per school in the country. • A favourable LER and a high LCR indicates a relative misallocation of resources between educator and classroom provisioning given limited funding. • The Eastern Cape has made a strategic choice to prioritise a low learner:educator ratio leading to relatively favourable educator post provisioning relative to other education resources. Other provinces have clearly set different relative priorities, enabling higher levels of resourcing for non-personnel non-capital and capital expenditure. • The Eastern Cape has attached a lower priority to addressing the classroom backlog or to providing learner materials in the classroom and school services, in comparison to relatively favourable levels of educator provisioning. Most of the districts in the former Transkei have a more favourable learner:educator ratio than the Western Cape. In the context of 48
A comparative analysis of education expenditure in Eastern Cape schools – November 2004 relative cuts in the provincial allocation to education and the current and future funding pressures set out at the start of this report, there is a clear case for reprioritising resources. • Pursuit of a low LER in the province has achieved the goal of relatively favourable post provisioning in most districts of the province. The time has now come to reprioritise resources in favour of other vital areas of the education process. Personnel, recurrent and capital expenditure • The large number of small schools in the province create a pressure to increase the educator establishment due to their low LERs. • The post provisioning model allocates posts especially to small schools, schools with a large number of grades and combined schools, creating pressure for a large establishment in the context of the Eastern Cape. • The province has been able to meet national norms in the provision of learner support materials (LSM). It is however below the average per capita spending on non-personnel non-capital expenditure per capita and well below draft per capita norms for NPNC. • Capital expenditure on school infrastructure has increased rapidly in recent years. Based on available figures the Eastern Cape will be able to meet its target of eliminating infrastructure backlogs over the next ten years. Realigning schools for quality education • There is a strong case for realigning the public school system to address these issues by implementing a full primary (grades R to 7) and full secondary (grades 8 to 12) system throughout the province. A number of educational benefits would result from this realignment of the schooling system. • The change of combined schools to primary schools would reduce the very wide age spread within these schools, an important consideration with the prevalence of over aged learners in schools. This would make management of these schools easier and contribute to social cohesion within the school. • The change of combined schools to secondary schools would also reduce pressure on classroom space in a system that already suffers from acute over-crowding and backlogs. 7 rather than 9 grades would be using the same number of classrooms. • In senior secondary schools currently, educators are teaching 10 to 12 subjects over only three grades in schools of acute classroom shortage. The practical result is often that each grade is taught one subject at a time in an overcrowded classroom, especially in small schools, with the educator moving between classrooms for different subjects. As the educator is only teaching a subject to three grades, high proportions of educator time are wasted through a low period load. This explains the seemingly paradoxical findings that LERs in senior secondary schools are very low, while educators report teaching very large class sizes of 50 or more in secondary schools. • Moving to a full secondary school system would enable much better utilisation of educators in the former Transkei. Larger secondary schools would be able to ‘cluster’ resources, offering a wider subject choice and achieving 49
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Province of the EASTERN CAPE DEPART
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CONTENTS SUMMARY i 1. INTRODUCTION
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A comparative analysis of education
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School Community Integration Pilot Project - Department of Education

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