Nic Spaull’s alarming analysis (Basic education thrown under the bus, April 17) of the drop in per pupil expenditure in the South African education system since 2010 will have many of your readers reaching for their favourite pain-relief tipple, but he does not cover the baby elephant in the room, namely the neglect of early childhood development by the state. The graph used to illustrate Spaull’s piece reveals that government expenditure on basic education ranges from the best-performing province finding nearly R21,000 per pupil per year in 2010 to the worst performer in 2019 having budgeted to spend just over R15,000 per pupil. This is hardly what one expects from a country in which the Bill of Rights guarantees access to basic education to all — without the "progressive realisation" and "available resources" limitations that apply to other socioeconomic rights, including the right to higher education. The fact that a further R57bn will go to higher education over the next three y...
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