The Democratic Alliance in the Northern Cape has requested that the MEC for Education be summoned to appear before the Portfolio Committee on Education, Sport, Arts & Culture to explain his department’s failure to disburse essential funds to schools. It is critical to fix this situation before schools open for the 2025 academic year.
Funding intended for the National School Nutrition Programme, additional support programmes for Grade 12 learners, school maintenance, stationery, and other teaching materials have not been paid to schools in four of the province’s five districts. The situation is becoming so dire that one Upington-based school has run up too much debt to buy stationery from local suppliers. Another school in Springbok struggled to find sufficient paper to print November exams for learners in Grade 8 to Grade 11. Schools are resorting to drastic measures, like the school in Daniëlskuil that has used funding intended for next year’s salaries to pay this year’s operational costs.
This failure is the latest in a string of questionable financial practices by the Northern Cape Department of Education. While schools struggle to cover basic operating costs, the department upped its discretionary spending by more than 4 000% in one single year. Donations and gifts to households from the department increased from R745 000 in the 2023 financial year to R3.5 million in the 2024 financial year. We’ve asked for a thorough report on this staggering increase, which coincided with the 2024 elections and exceeded discretionary spending in prior years by far.
Since September, I’ve written to the MEC to alert him to the negative impact that the non-payment of funds has on education in the province and we’ve raised our concerns in the house during the tabling of the department’s Annual Report 2023/24. The MEC has ignored my concerns, just as the district offices are seemingly ignoring the requests for clarity from affected schools and it appears that there is simply no political will to address the situation. With neither funding nor feedback from district offices, it is becoming impossible for schools to plan adequately for the 2025 academic year and the quality of learning offered to learners in rural communities will be negatively impacted.
We are told that budget cuts make it difficult to fund departmental activities. But since the department can afford to spend R3.5 million on discretionary payments, there can be no reason for schools to be left without stationery and forced to borrow salaries to pay suppliers.