Whose Interests Should Come First In Education?

Ultimately, the interests of learners, and not unions, will have to prevail.

Photo by Kimberly Farmer on Unsplash

It is no secret that South Africa spends a massive amount of money on education.

Nearly 20% of her total government expenditure – equivalent to around 6% to 6.7% of GDP – is allocated to education. Of this, roughly 68% is allocated to basic education.

It is also no secret that roughly 78% of provincial education budgets is consumed by employee compensation.

Despite this, South Africa has been dogged by an education crisis of massive proportions for years, with teacher shortages and overcrowded classrooms among its major contributing factors.

Against this backdrop, the number of unemployed teachers has also been steadily increasing over the years.

Naturally, a question that should arise at this point is how there can be a shortage of teachers in a context where classrooms, particularly in disadvantaged communities, are overcrowded and teacher-to-pupil ratios are high.

Chief Economist at the Efficient Group, Dawie Roodt, has provided a discomforting yet necessary response to it. Roodt has essentially argued that employed teachers are “overpaid”, and that their high salaries are preventing the government from hiring more teachers whose employment can improve the quality of education. The solution, according to him, is to cut their salaries in half, expand the teacher workforce, and ensure greater accountability when it comes to the performance of teachers.

Unsurprisingly, Roodt has come under attack from the South African Democratic Teachers Union (SADTU) and the Public Servants Association (PSA) for his comments.

Both unions have dismissed him as “reckless”, rubbished his comments about teachers being overpaid, highlighted the challenges they face, and called on the government to increase investment in basic education and ensure that existing educational resources are allocated more efficiently.

I say unsurprisingly because SADTU and the PSA are unions that primarily exist to advance the sectional interests of their members. Their primary interest is not the education of the largely black and disadvantaged learners for whom education is a pathway out of generational poverty.

This fact is important to underscore in any honest discussion about basic education in South Africa.

The sectional interests of SADTU and the PSA are obviously rational and not sinister, but they are not always identical to those of learners, and it is easy to see how the two can come into conflict when they diverge.

Salaries are a particularly sensitive issue because they represent people’s livelihoods and their subjective valuation of what their labour is worth, so a discomforting discussion around them can understandably become very emotionally charged.

I have a faint memory of myself in Grade 2 in 2010 sitting in a classroom and watching visibly enraged adults protest outside my primary school. I would learn years later that the heated protest had been organised by SADTU members who were in disagreement with the then government over salary increases.

To be fair, Reuben Maleka, the General Manager of the PSA, is not wrong about the genuine challenges that teachers face. He is right about the ever-rising cost of living in South Africa, and he is also right about the many good teachers in the basic education system who go out of their way to ensure that learners receive the best education possible, even under the most challenging circumstances.

Beyond this, it is true that the drivers of the education crisis in the country are multidimensional.

And yet, all these nuances do not settle the question of whether the existing allocation of educational resources is adequately serving the interests of learners.

If Maleka has acknowledged that these resources need to be allocated more efficiently, then he may need to contend with the reality that wasteful expenditure, outsourcing, and unnecessary administrative costs are not the only issues when it comes to resource allocation.

While I will not use the term “overpaid” as Roodt has - because I have not crunched the figures - it is patently clear that a massive portion of provincial education budgets is already being allocated to employee compensation. Comparatively little is being allocated to other critical areas, and this fact cannot simply be sidestepped with fearmongering about a potential reduction in teacher morale and productivity.

Even if the issues Maleka identified are eventually addressed, the elephant in the room will remain.

It is plainly evasive of him to argue that the pie is still not big enough. And even if we accept that this is true, how exactly is the pie supposed to be made bigger?

Where will the broke South African government find more money to spend on a sector that is already so massively funded?

Prof Thomas Sowell reminds us that there are no perfect solutions; there are only trade-offs.

The idea that we can simply call for increased investment from the government without having a discomforting discussion about the allocation of educational resources is not only evasive, but also untenable.

There is no perfect scenario in which we can satisfy competing interests without making trade-offs or incurring costs elsewhere.

At some point, we will need to have the discussion. And ultimately, the interests of learners – and not unions – will have to prevail.

Ayanda Sakhile Zulu holds a BSocSci in Political Studies from the University of Pretoria and is a Policy Officer at the Free Market Foundation.