Question NW835 to the Minister of Finance
31 March 2023 - NW835
Buthelezi, Mr EM to ask the Minister of Finance
What is the National Treasury’s position with regard to the request for funding of the Department of Basic Education for an additional 16 000 teacher posts to improve the teacher-student ratio?
Reply:
The National Treasury does not generally have any official position on specific funding requests and focuses on the process on how budgetary decisions are made as funding decisions always involve trade-offs between different priorities. Such process includes consultation with the technical Medium Term Expenditure Committee and Technical Committee on Finance processes, as well as political forums like the Budget Council, Budget Forum, Ministers Committee on the Budget, and ultimately, Cabinet.
In the 2022 Medium Term Expenditure Framework and the 2023 Medium Term Expenditure Framework, as reported on pages 72 and 60 of the 2022 and 2023 Budget Reviews, R24 billion and R20 billion respectively was added to the provincial equitable share for provinces to deal with compensation of employees in provincial education departments, which includes dealing with the learner-educator ratio.