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South Africa: Review of national and provincial education budgets 2007
28 June 2007
IDASA
Transversal expenditure trends in provincial education budget 2007 do not deviate from previous years’ expenditure frameworks. Personnel expenditure is still on a tight leash and both recurrent and non-recurrent non-personnel expenditures are on the rise. However, allocations to capital expenditure in provincial education departments are highly variable and in this regard, also mirror the patterns of previous years. If one uses summary inequality measures to characterise the distribution of provincial education expenditure in 2005, one notices that the mean absolute deviation indicates greater levels of inequality in 2005, but this can be attributed to the sudden jump in the per learner expenditure of the North West. Also, the coefficient of variation indicates a marginally higher level of inequality in provincial education per learner expenditures. Once spending in the North West is excluded, the average position of the poor and rich provinces remains unchanged during 2004 and 2005. Poor provincial education departments have obtained parity with the national per capita average, but such levels are overwhelmingly supported by the high levels of per learner spending in the Free State. Provinces such as KwaZulu Natal and Limpopo still spent three per cent and eight per cent respectively below the national per learner average in 2005. The same story applies to the rich provinces where the Northern Cape’s 25 per cent gain on the national average more than compensates for the Gauteng province’s sub-national per learner spending level. Per capita expenditure levels are in constant flux and are also heavily influenced by events outside of the scope and control of education departments such is the case in the North West. This reinforces the belief that per learner expenditure levels converge at an essentially arbitrary level, which suggests little or no information about pre-set adequacy or efficiency levels.
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