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A review of the financing, resourcing and costs of education in public schools Briefing Education Portfolio Committee 4 March 2003. The task of improving quality, and equality of quality, in education is perhaps the most important development task confronting our nation. The approach.
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A review of the financing, resourcing and costs of education in public schools Briefing Education Portfolio Committee 4 March 2003
The task of improving quality, and equality of quality, in education is perhaps the most important development task confronting our nation.
The approach • Developments since 1994 • Access • Funding • Equity • 10 focus areas • Financial transfers: from the national level to the school • Achieving optimal educator utilisation and development • Translating school allocations to non-personnel resources • Influencing the prices of education inputs • Preserving physical assets in schools • Respecting basic human rights • School nutrition • National Norms and Standards for School Funding • School allocations • School fees and other private inputs • Physical infrastructure • Translating school resources to learner performance Recommendations
> Developments since 1994 • Improved access to schools • MTEF expenditure improvements in real terms • Average annual growth of 1.3% currently • More equity • Inter-provincial equity better by 60% • Infrastructure, equipment remain major causes of inequity
> Financial transfers: national to school • Equity in theory, regressive funding in practice • Welfare pressures in poor provinces • Over 20% difference in per learner funding in POS • Educators crowd out all else in poor provinces • Many budgeting decisions not easily explained • National budget reform process • An education budget monitoring and support office • Improved budget analysis capacity • An education budget monitoring and support office to provide valuable support to PEDs • Monitoring of pro-poor funding • Involvement in ESF review process
> Optimal educator utilisation • Utilisation issues • Average L:E vs maximum L:E • Small schools • Mobility of educators • Need to enhance quality of educators
> Optimal educator utilisation • More efficient and practical teacher utilisation techniques • Discussions with educator organisations to arrive at practical teacher utilisation study • School timetabling support • Examination of mix of technology in the classroom • Assessment of the L:E ratio • Better administrative support in schools • Strengthening of current initiatives to develop teacher capacity and reward professional excellence • Whole range of quality issues, from curriculum knowledge to values and morale. • Rewards for educators who develop their own professional capacity
> Translating school allocations to school resources • Ultimately, all schools to become Section 21 schools • Good ‘resourcing agency’ service will always be needed by schools • Saving allocations for capital investment • Need to control runaway electricity/water consumption
> Translating school allocations to school resources • Organisational and systems improvements to support effective procurement of goods and services for schools • Improved services to non-section 21 schools and service delivery assessments by the schools themselves. • Roll-out of best practice across the country to improve school level financial and resource management. • Study into support needed by increasing number of section 21 schools in the longer term. • Solutions to the current non-section 21 saving problem. • Tackling of excessive water and electricity consumption.
> Influencing the prices of inputs • Procurement services to offer economy of scale benefits to all • Question around cost to schools of Government procurement regulations • Textbooks • An insufficiently competitive market • Expensive materials • Poorly coordinated ordering • Uniforms – local monopolies and expensive tastes
> Influencing the prices of inputs • Negotiations and systems to lower the prices of school inputs • Open contracts negotiated by Government on behalf of schools. • Securing of preferential rates from utility and telephone companies. • Provisions for non-section 21 schools to procure at market prices. • Measures to lower the price of textbooks • Research into the efficiency of the textbook market. • Better lines of communication with the textbook industry. • Greater coordination of the textbook ordering process to produce economies of scale.
> Influencing the prices of inputs • Measures to reduce the cost of uniforms • Elimination of sole supplier markets through policy on uniform specifications. • Engagement with clothing industry. • Long range fundamental change.
> Preserving physical assets in schools • Asset registers in schools • Textbook retrieval • Poor systems cause enormous financial losses • School-level and system-level challenges
> Preserving physical assets in schools • Improved asset management systems in schools • Better accounting of physical assets. • Storage facilities and management improvements for the preservation of assets. • Systems for higher textbook retrieval rates in schools • Better measurement and monitoring of textbook retrieval rates. • Schools-based capacity to retrieve books and system-wide tracking of which learners have received books from the state. • Integration of retrieval targets into general school management processes.
> Respecting basic human rights • Worrying indications of disregard by employees for rights of poor • Attitude change a prerequisite to systems/policy change • Campaigns, education and prosecution to reduce the marginalisation of poor learners • A campaign to counteract the marginalisation of the poor by bureaucrats and teachers. • Stronger disciplinary action against transgressors.
> School nutrition • Major system failure during 2002 • Need for DoE to take more proactive stand – not just a health issue • School lunches for all poor GET learners • Strategies to counter organisational failure in the roll-out of feeding schemes. • Better research on the value added by school feeding schemes. • School involvement through e.g. vegetable gardens. • Minimum goal of ensuring that all poor GET learners receive a balanced meal on each school day.
> Norms & Standards: allocations • Clearly no adequacy in e.g. R50 per learner, yet more research needed • Production functions, costed minimum package • Provinces differ in their poverty profiles • National resource targeting list approach proposed • Phased in funding via increases to baseline preferable • Poor learners in rich schools – no easy, equitable solutions
> Norms & Standards: allocations • Completion of specific education resourcing studies • Formulation of a costed minimum package required by learners, to be used as a benchmark for planning. • Research into optimality of the pro-poor distribution curves currently used. • Extensive research into education production functions in South Africa.
> Norms & Standards: allocations • A national resource targeting list approach to ensure adequate non-personnel recurrent funding in all poor schools • Greater clarity around what items are procured using the school allocation, and what items are procured through other means. • Better understanding of where allocations are inadequate. • Investigations into a national poverty targeting approach that would treat equally poor learners across the country the same in terms of non-personnel recurrent inputs. • Possible amendments to the current method of determining school poverty. • Clearer policy statement on poor learners attending non-poor schools.
> Norms & Standards: private inputs • Official fees below R100, except in Q5 • Large variation within Q5 – personal choice • 85% of parents find fees ‘reasonable’ – we need to focus on margins • ‘Hidden fees’ conservatively at 25% of formal fees • 6% of learners spend >1 hour getting to school • Collaboration with DSD on exemptions criteria necessary
> Norms & Standards: private inputs • More stringently monitored and better informed fee-setting processes • Improved monitoring of fees charged in public schools. • Steps against demands for ‘hidden’ fees. • Broader participation of parents in fee-setting processes. • More stringent enforcement of procedures laid down by policy. • Adequate public resourcing to eliminate need for fees in poor schools.
> Norms & Standards: private inputs • Fairer and more effective exemptions processes that are fully integrated into Government’s poverty alleviation programmes • Possible alignment of fee eligibility with eligibility for welfare grants. • Removal of fee, and hence exemptions pressures in poor schools. • Transport assistance to poor learners • Investigations into alternatives to school bus approach. • Greater capacity of households to afford transport costs due to alleviation of pressures in other areas.
> Physical infrastructure • Pockets of especial deprivation, e.g. ex-Transkei • Migration results in absolute classroom shortages greater than net classroom shortages • Infrastructure planning highly complex – inadequate capacity
> Physical infrastructure • The finalisation of a comprehensive capital investment and maintenance policy • Policy and tools to assist physical planning at the local level. • Holistic approach to school infrastructure, migration, admissions and school quality. • More strategic prioritisation from the national level of schools infrastructure development • Changes to measurement of backlogs. • Comprehensive national plan informed by better information about local need, and an improved capital investment framework.
> Translating inputs to outputs • Current systems to monitor output: Matric, emerging GETC, Systemic Evaluation, SACMEQ, WSE • Possible to integrate the data to produce indicators at provincial and ‘district’ level • Careful dissemination of information could lead to greater public and institutional awareness of importance of outputs and relative efficiency of schooling
