This paper was prepared for the International Budget Partnership. Civil society organisations in the public basic education space, wishing to influence finance allocations to education, had asked questions regarding what budget and expenditure information is available that related to the public basic (school) education function in South Africa. The paper aimed to assist these organisations by detailing the education funding processes in South Africa, and by identifying and explaining publicly available sources of expenditure information.
Key insights
The requested information is not available because either:
- it is not reflected in the budget documents because the format of budget documents does not cater for it to be shown – they are either too aggregated or are not structured to show the requested information; or
- it is not collected during the recording of expenditure transactions.
National and provincial government departments are required to prepare budgets following a prescribed budget template. While the budget format ensures uniformity across departments, enabling cross-provincial analyses, only so much information can be meaningfully presented in the published budget documents. Consequently, while budget information is very useful, it is often limited in scope. Expenditure information, by contrast, is more detailed, but is often not easily accessible. And where it is, it may still not answer certain questions some parties may have.
Influencing budget allocations is a difficult, involved process, requiring a thorough understanding of the budget process, and persistence. A long-term approach is required, with submissions, interventions and interactions timed to match the rigid budget process timetable, during which there are key moments when information can be fed into the process to make any impact. If one’s timing is out, then the opportunity to influence allocations is lost for another year. Not only is timing crucial, but also is knowing what to try to change, what information is most likely to get a hearing, and who (which sphere of government) to lobby for particular changes.
Public basic education is funded from the provincial equitable share, provincial own revenues and national conditional grants to provinces. Conditional grants account for, on aggregate, less than 5% of basic education budgets. The other 95% is funded from discretionary funds – a combination of the provincial equitable share and provincial own revenues.
Provinces are fully responsible for compiling their budgets, and any direct interference by national government in the exercise of this responsibility would be unconstitutional. In other words, national government cannot dictate to provinces how much to allocate to any budget. However, the Constitution allows national government to prescribe service delivery norms and standards in national legislation, which provinces are required to adhere to. This means that national government can only exercise indirect influence over provincial budget allocations.
The primary avenues for influencing budget allocations for public education are therefore:
- directly, through the budget processes of each province (not national government’s budget process);
- indirectly, through the development and enforcement of national service delivery norms and standards for public education (which cannot be so-called costed funding norms, i.e. norms that set an explicit monetary value);
- indirectly, through processes related to the division of nationally collected revenue (which may give provinces a larger provincial equitable share that they may or may not allocate to education); and
- directly, through the creation and design of conditional grants within the national government budget process (though this is a relatively minor funding source for education).