BUDGET 2026| Basic education takes centre stage in Godongwana’s fiscal plan

Finance minister Enoch Godongwana has placed education at the centre of the 2026/2027 medium-term expenditure framework (MTEF), with basic education emerging as a clear funding priority. For this MTEF, education (basic and higher departments) and sport, arts, and culture constitute the largest component at 23.7% (R527.2bn) of the consolidated R2.67-trillion government expenditure. The department provides physical infrastructure at public schools through the school infrastructure backlog grant and the education infrastructure grant.

These grants are funded through the planning, information and assessment programme and, combined, account for 47.2% (R51bn) of the department’s total budget over the MTEF period. The education infrastructure grant is allocated R48.9bn over the MTEF period as co-funding for provincial education infrastructure programmes. This includes the construction, maintenance and upgrading of new and existing infrastructure.

An additional R2.3bn is allocated to the grant (R1bn in 2025/2026 and R1.3bn in 2026/2027) for the rapid schools build programme in the Western Cape, funded through the budget facility for infrastructure. Funds from the school infrastructure backlogs grant are intended to eradicate and replace inappropriate school infrastructure, provide additional classrooms to alleviate overcrowding and provide basic services such as water and sanitation. To this end, R2.1bn is allocated to the grant over the MTEF period to build 30 additional classrooms and provide safe sanitation to 50 schools.

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These projects are expected to be completed in 2025/2026, after which the school infrastructure backlogs grant will be incorporated into the education infrastructure grant. This is intended to allow provinces to address remaining backlogs and for the department to focus on the planning, oversight and support of infrastructure delivery by provinces. To improve teaching and learning, the department of basic education will introduce and incrementally expand a mother-tongue-based bilingual education strategy, starting with grade 4 from 2026.

Part of the strategy entails training teachers in bilingual and mother-tongue teaching and assessment methods and providing support materials to allow pupils to access mathematics, science and technology instruction in their home languages alongside English. To roll out the strategy, R57m is allocated over the medium-term in the curriculum policy, support and monitoring programme. Teaching and learning are also supported through printing and delivering mathematics and literacy workbooks for grades R to 9 to a targeted 9-million pupils in public schools each year.

To achieve this, R4bn is allocated over the MTEF period in the curriculum policy, support and monitoring programme. The early childhood development (ECD) grant is allocated R6.3bn over the medium-term to supplement ongoing ECD initiatives in provinces, such as providing subsidies for children accessing ECD services. An additional R210m is allocated to the grant over the same period for infrastructure support, including the construction of low-cost ECD centres, to ECD providers.

Providing skills and competencies for a changing world, theFunza Lushakabursary programme provides bursaries to prospective teachers to address critical educator shortages in priority subject areas such as inclusive education, mathematics, coding, robotics, science and technology. Funding of R4bn over the medium-term in the teachers, education human resources and institutional development programme to provide a targeted 29,831 bursaries. The NSFAS manages the bursary scheme.

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