South African state schooling remains famously dysfunctional. This is reflected in international studies, where the country generally ranks very poorly, and in the dire state of much township and rural schooling.

A recent local study found that Grade 5 pupils in historically black schools underperformed grade 3 pupils in historically white (but now integrated) schools. The authors concluded that by Grade 5 "the educational backlog experienced in historically black schools is already equivalent to well over two years worth of learning."

The current crisis in South African education often tends to be reflexively blamed on the "legacy of Bantu Education" - and particularly on the massive differential in per capita spending on white and black schooling throughout the apartheid period.

One question this raises is how per capita state spending on schooling today compares with that under apartheid?

In answer to a recent parliamentary question from Democratic Alliance MP Andricus van der Westhuizen Minister of Basic Education Angie Motshekga provided detailed figures of budgeted per capita expenditure on schooling, by province, in South Africa for the 2013/14 financial year. The figures are provided in Table 1 below:

Table 1: Enrolment figures and budgeted state expenditure on schooling by province 2013-2014

Source: Minister of Basic Education, August 30 2013

As can be seen from the table the per capita expenditure is (somewhat crudely) derived by dividing the total budgeted expenditure per province by the number of pupils per province. Nationally the average per capita expenditure was R14 553.32 per pupil. If one was to add in the R17.6bn budget of the national Department of Basic Education to the pot this would push per capita expenditure up to R 16 029.31.

In 1970 the Progressive Party MP, Helen Suzman, submitted a similar question to the Ministers responsible for White, Black, Coloured and Indian education, asking for the "unit cost, including expenditure from both revenue and loan accounts, per (a) pupil, (b) secondary pupil and (c) primary pupil" in White, Coloured, Indian and Bantu schools "in the latest year for which statistics are available".

The various ministers provided the following figures, incorporated into Table 2 below:

Table 2: Per unit state expenditure on school education by race in 1968/1969 (1968 Rand values):

Source: Hansard, February 20 1970 cols 1528 to 1530

The South African Institute of Race Relations' 1970 Survey of Race Relations cited an estimate that overall provincial per capita expenditure on white education was R228.38 per pupil. The ratio of per capita expenditure on White pupils as against Coloured, Indian and Black pupils then was approximately 1 to 3.2, 3.2 and 15.8.

If one controls for the effects of inflation (R1 in 1968 = R57 in 2013) the expenditure in 1968 in today's Rand values is as follows:

Table 3: Per unit state expenditure on school education by race in 1968/1969 (2013 Rand values):

Expenditure on white school education per province then varied, in 2013 Rand values, from R16 293.45 in Natal to R10 887.00 in the Transvaal. If the SAIRR's estimate is correct the average per capita expenditure on white pupils by the provinces was R 13 017.66.

It is not absolutely clear whether one can draw a like-for-like comparison with the figures provided by Minister Motshekga, as certain items may have been excluded from these figures. The Minister of Indian Affairs stated that his department's unit costs had been calculated "on the basis operating in all education departments required to record unit costs, i.e. that expenditure of a capital nature and expenditure from the loan account are not included in the calculation." The other Ministers did not record this qualification however.

Figures published in the SAIRR's 1983 Survey of Race Relations indicated that by 1982 per capita expenditure on schooling had increased across all race groups, but they were still very low for black South Africans (see Table 4). For white pupils per capita expenditure was R 17 550.97 (in 2013 Rand values) excluding capital expenditure, and R20 072,75 including it. Excluding capital expenditure the ratio of per capita expenditure on White pupils to Indian, Coloured and Black pupils (outside of the independent homelands) was 1 to 1.7, 2.4 and 8.3.

Table 4: Per capita state expenditure by race on school education in South Africa (exc. Independent Homelands) 1981/2 and 1982/3 in 2013 Rand values

* In ‘white' areas and non-independent homelands. Source: SAIRR, Survey of Race Relations in South Africa 1983

In 1986 then Minister of National Education FW de Klerk introduced a 10-year plan, the ultimate goal of which was to ensure racial parity in education, albeit in a still segregated school system. The plan depended on increasing educational expenditure by 4.1% a year (the expected growth rate of the economy) and allocating this to the departments with the biggest backlogs. However, the ANC's very successful sanctions and ungovernability campaigns severely restricted South Africa's economic growth in the late 1980s and the plan had to be abandoned in 1989 (the economy had only grown by an average of 1.3%.)

By the time the National Party government set about desegregating the school system in the early 1990s the differentials in expenditure by race had narrowed, but were still substantial (see Table 5). The SAIRR's 1993/94 Race Relations Survey put per capita expenditure in House of Assembly schools, now in the process of racial integration, at R 16 526.16 (in 2013 Rand values.) It's not clear though whether this included or excluded capital expenditure.

Table 5: Per capita state expenditure by race on school education in South Africa (exc. Independent Homelands) 1992/93 in 2013 Rand values

One has to be cautious about comparing these figures over time - even controlling for inflation - as the methods for calculating per capita expenditure may well have also changed over time. Certain expenditure may also have been off or over budget, or not counted - if it fell under another department. Nonetheless, it does seem that per capita state expenditure on schooling today is quite close, in real terms, to the per capita expenditure on White, Coloured and Indian schooling in the last few years of apartheid.

The ANC government then has two great achievements to its name: It has both equalised educational spending by race and it has, since 1994, gradually lifted per capita expenditure for the entire school system to a level similar to that spent on SA's racial minorities during the final few years of National Party rule. However, this all makes the failure to actually improve the quality of education for pupils in historically black schools all the more glaring.

This article was published with the assistance of the Friedrich-Naumann-Stiftung für die Freiheit (FNF). The views presented in the article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of FNF.

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