Hungry children: Basic education sector budget challenges for nutrition programme

For the 2020/2021 financial year, the National Treasury allocated R7.7-billion for the provision of school meals. 

While this grant has not been subject to cuts or reprioritisations like other allocations to the basic education sector, the grant has also not received any additional funding now or over the medium term to deal with the additional cost burdens imposed by Covid-19. 

R50-million of existing National School Nutrition Programme (NSNP) funding – labelled as “savings” from when the NSNP was suspended between March and July 2020 due to school closures – was repurposed within the grant in the June Supplementary Budget. This was used to pay for Covid-19 expenses such as sanitisers and personal protective equipment (PPE) for volunteer food handlers who prepare meals. 

This aligns with Treasury’s decision not to allocate the basic education sector any additional funding to address challenges imposed by Covid-19. This has resulted in the use of already stretched budgets to pay for sanitisers, water tankers and mobile toilets, as well as extra mobile classrooms for social distancing.  

Thanks to successful litigation from Equal Education and the school governing bodies of two Limpopo schools, represented by SECTION27 and the Equal Education Law Centre, the High Court of South Africa ordered education authorities to reinstate the NSNP for all qualifying learners, including those at home due to Covid-19. Provincial education departments were then required to develop new ways of getting food to learners.

Most provinces continue to provide learners with hot meals daily at school, even for learners who are at home for medical reasons or rotating school timetables. Learners are encouraged to use regular scholar transport to collect meals at school, even on the days where they aren’t expected in the classroom. Other provinces, such as Mpumalanga and the Northern Cape, have begun distributing food parcels to learners for the days they are not at school. 

The Department of Basic Education (DBE) stated in July that it was worried it might run out of funding for the NSNP before the end of the year because of the increased prices of food parcels in comparison to the bulk meals usually cooked at school: 

“The business planning process to date has determined that there are possibilities of budget inadequacy on the provision of food parcels during the latter months of the year (November and December 2020). This is due to the fact that the average NSNP meal cost per month is R63 per month, creating a shortfall of more than R100 when compared to the unit cost for a monthly food parcel,” said Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga. 

SECTION27, Equal Education and the Equal Education Law Centre received most provinces’ revised business plans on 2 November, with three provinces’ plans still outstanding. Despite new costs such as PPE and sanitisers, the plans indicate that these provinces have avoided running out of money for the programme by cutting NSNP events and using savings generated during the period where the programme was suspended. 

Because food parcels are pricey, most provinces have not taken this approach and continue to provide learners with daily hot meals. But many learners can’t collect food on the days they are not required at school because of issues with scholar transport. 

In a mid-October survey of 143 Equalisers (learner members of Equal Education), 94% of learners said they didn’t receive a meal on the days they didn’t attend school; 79 Equalisers needed transport to collect food; and 77 said they did not have access to scholar transport to do this. For as long as schools have rotating timetable systems, it’s likely that learners who have to remain at home on certain days will not be able to collect the meals that they are entitled to. 

Distributing food parcels to learners to cover their nutritional needs at home, for those who cannot afford to travel to school every day to collect meals, would mitigate problems with scholar transport. The DBE maintains, however, that it categorically cannot afford to distribute food parcels to all learners for the days they are not at school, and that food vouchers “will not be feasible in the current financial year”. This is because, the DBE has said, “the NSNP… did not receive any additional funding for the delivery of meals/food parcels through scholar transport”. 

Although the NSNP has been largely protected from reductions in expenditure, efforts made to expand its reach have, however, been hamstrung. In February 2020, Treasury announced a R123.1-million reduction to the NSNP conditional grant, stating that reductions would not impact on learners in quintiles 1-3 schools, but that expansion to needy learners in quintiles 4 and 5 schools would be “slower”.