Financing education in the Gauteng province of South Africa: A twenty year analysis of using budgets to improve opportunities

The historical pattern of educational financing has been characterised by severe racial and regional inequalities in South Africa. The unequal and separate funding of public education under the apartheid regime created huge disparities between white and black schools and this had serious implications for the provision of quality education, learner performance and educational outcomes, especially in historically disadvantaged schools. After the democratic elections in 1994, the government faced enormous challenges in funding education. The education policies primarily aimed at redressing the inheritance of race-based inequality and to build a new and unified national system based on equity. Education receives a large share of the national budget and within the education budget increased spending is allocated to redress inequalities in school education. Using the qualitative research method, it was found that the Gauteng Department of Education (GDE) has worked vigorously to improve funding and budgeting to redress the imbalances and to achieve quality education. In the past twenty years, it has achieved near universal access to education, reduced dropout rates across all grades in the secondary school phase, increased and sustained learner performance, especially at Grade 12 level, increased and equalised education spending, and made substantial progress in eliminating the infrastructure backlogs.