Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana has announced a R19.1 billion increase to the Department of Basic Education (DBE) over the medium term. This allocation, revealed during the 2025 Budget Speech, aims to address critical challenges within the sector.
Minister Godongwana highlighted that provincial education departments allocate 76% of their budgets to salaries, leaving only 24% for essential operational expenses.
Only R24 out of every R100 of their budget is left for funding school infrastructure, meals for learners from poor backgrounds, and stationery and textbooks, amongst others,
The additional funding will primarily be used to retain approximately 11,000 teachers, addressing concerns about high learner-teacher ratios.
To prevent compensation of employees from crowding out other equally important areas of spending, R19.1 billion is added over the medium term to keep approximately 11,000 teachers in classrooms.
Social justice group Section27 welcomed the overall education budget increase, which rises by 7.6% to R349.5 billion.
They noted the 2.7% real increase as the "largest investment in basic education over the past decade" and expressed optimism that it "if wielded effectively, may better resource provinces to address overcrowded classrooms, school infrastructure backlogs and chronic teacher shortages than in previous years."
ECD Funding Sees Major Surge
The Early Childhood Development (ECD) sector will receive a substantial boost, with its budget increasing by R2.9 billion, from R10.6 billion in 2024 to R13.6 billion. Minister Godongwana emphasised the importance of ECD as "the foundation to building the next generation of citizens who contribute economically and socially to this great nation."
Section27 also praised the 27.8% year-on-year increase for ECD, recognising it as a "crucial step toward expanding access and improving the quality of early learning programmes across the country."
However, the group raised concerns about a R69 million (1.9%) increase for workbooks and learning materials. Factoring in 4.7% CPI inflation, this translates to a real decline of 3.5%.
"This shortfall risks undermining efforts to improve education quality and may place additional strain on provincial budgets, which could be forced to cover the gap in learning support materials," Section27 cautioned.
