Eastern Cape schools challenge years of underfunding

On 19 August 2026, the Eastern Cape High Court in Makhanda will hear an important case about the funding of public schools in the province. The Makhanda Circle of Unity and three public schools in Makhanda, have taken the Eastern Cape Education Department (ECDOE), as well as the Minister of Education and National Treasury to court, to challenge years of underfunding for Eastern Cape schools. They are represented by the Legal Resources Centre.

The case emanates from a 2020 decision by the ECDOE to deviate from the per-learner school allocation target that schools receive as part of their yearly budget. Since 2020, Eastern Cape schools have been systemically underfunded, and in most years, schools have received far less money per learner than their counterparts in other provinces.

 

How does the school allocation work?

Providing learners with access to education requires that, amongst other things, schools are equipped to carry on the day-to-day business of teaching and learners have access to learning materials. Recognizing this, the Amended National Norms and Standards for Public School Funding provides for the transfer of school allocations to all ordinary public schools by the relevant Provincial Education Department (PED). Each year, the Minister of Basic Education sets a national per-learner allocation target, which varies between quintiles. Using that target, PEDs then set their own per-learner allocation, and schools’ allocations are calculated by multiplying the number of learners enrolled at the school by the relevant per-learner allocation.

While the Norms and Standards allow for PEDs to deviate from the target, they impose strict requirements on any deviation, requiring the relevant PED to develop a joint plan with the Department of Basic Education, National Treasury and the relevant Provincial Treasury detailing the PED’s plans to return to funding schools at the target again as soon as possible.

The funds schools receive through their school allocation are essential to the functioning of the school. These funds cover the costs of textbooks and other LTSM and stationery, as well as schools’ day-to-day running expenses. This includes everything from maintenance to municipal services, toilet paper and soap for learners to paper for photocopying and printing exams.

 

What is happening in the Eastern Cape?

Since the end of 2020, schools in the Eastern Cape, one of the poorest provinces in the country, have been consistently funded below the per-learner target. During the 2020/21; 2021/22, and 2022/23 financial years, schools in the Eastern Cape were receiving as little as half of their counterparts in other provinces. For example, during the 2021/2022 financial year, the per-learner target was set at R1466 per learner per year. Schools in the Eastern Cape only received R816 per learner for the year. This is about 52% of what they were supposed to receive, without any additional assistance from the ECDOE.  During the 2022/2023 financial year, the Eastern Cape schools only received 53% of the per learner allocation.

These deviations were undertaken without any of the prescribed joint plans being developed, and without any input from the affected public schools.

After pressure from schools and civil society groups, the ECDOE announced that it would fund schools at the per-learner target in the 2023/24 financial year. However, what subsequently transpired is that while the ECDOE was, on paper, utilizing the national per learner target, they unlawfully and unconstitutionally retained a portion of each school’s school allocation, transferring only 64.25% of each school’s full allocation to the school. The remainder of the money was retained by the ECDOE under the guise of it being utilised for provincial norms and standards – a line item for which no provision is made in the Norms and Standards for School Funding. The ECDOE has also been unable to explain in court papers what the retained money has been used for and how it has benefitted schools across the province.

The trend has continued into subsequent financial years and in the 2026/2027 financial year, 40% of the school allocation is retained by the ECDOE, leaving schools with only 60% of the budget to provide education to learners. In real terms, this means that no-fee paying schools that are meant to receive R1835 per learner for the financial year, will only be receiving R1101 per learner. This amount must cover all the educational expenses for the learner for the school year, including textbooks and stationery.

No-fee paying schools have been hit the hardest by the ECDOE’s decisions. Serving socio-economically vulnerable communities, these schools could not rely on school fees or fundraising attempts to offset the impact of the ECDOE’s funding cuts. However, quintile 4 and 5 fee-paying schools were also significantly impacted, with many of their communities also unable to offset the ECDOE’s funding cuts.

At ground level, parents who are already surviving from child support grants, have been forced to buy toilet paper and cleaning products for the schools, as well as copying paper to supplement the schools’ incomes. Teachers and principals have had to dig into their own pockets to afford stationery and textbooks for learners. Unfortunately, in many schools, the lack of funding has inevitably led to learners being educated without stationery and textbooks, and in buildings that cannot be properly maintained because of the lack of funding. Schools have also reported services such as water and electricity being cut due to the inability to pay.

In 2023, the Makhanda Circle of Unity and three applicant schools, Hoerskool PJ Oliver, Ntsika Secondary School and Tyantyi Primary School, launched an application in the Makhanda High Court seeking to:

1. Review and set aside the ECDOE’s unlawful and unconstitutional decision to retain 33.75% of Eastern Cape Schools’ school allocations during the 2023/24 and 2024/25 financial years;
2. Directing the ECDOE to pay all schools their full school allocation for the 2023/24 and 2024/25 financial years, essentially returning the portion of the allocations unlawfully retained by the ECDOE;
3. Declaring the ECDOE’s funding of Eastern Cape schools below the national per-learner target for the 2020/21; 2021/22; and 2022/2 financial years unconstitutional, unlawful and invalid; and
4. Seeking declaratory relief regarding the prescriptive nature of paragraph 114(b) of the Norms and Standards which speaks to the need for the development of a joint plan to ensure that PEDs fund schools at the per learner target as soon as possible in cases of deviation.

The relief sought regarding the joint plan became particularly important in light of the ECDOE’s acknowledgment in answer that no joint plan was ever actually developed in all the years it funded schools below the per-learner target.

The progression of the court case was significantly delayed by the ECDOE, who claimed insurmountable difficulties in delivering a record of their impugned decisions, all the while continuing to repeat the impugned retention decision with every financial year

The relief sought in the application will have a substantial impact on schools in the Eastern Cape, seeing the return of funds unlawfully withheld from them previously. Moreover, the relief sought regarding the nature of these decisions and the interpretation of the Norms and Standards will have implications across the country in all other provinces where underfunding is also an issue.

Ensuring that PEDs do not allow budgets to dictate the scope of the education provisioning they make available to schools is a vital step in giving effect to the immediately realizable nature of the right to basic education. It is ultimately rights, and not budgets, that should shape the education learners have access to.