Budget 2026 | A bigger slice of pie for ECD feeding schemes

The Treasury has moved to protect South Africa’s most vulnerable children, providing extra funds to expand the provision of early childhood development (ECD) and giving an inflation-beating boost to the school meals programme. ECD education services are provided to children under the age of four and are aimed at ensuring they are ready for school when they enter grade R. An additional R12.8bn has been set aside for ECD to provide services to an additional 300,000 children over the next three years.

The daily subsidy remains unchanged at R24/child. Expenditure onECDwill increase by 13.8% over the medium term, rising from R12.2bn in 2025/26 to R18bn in 2028/29. The allocation to the national schools nutrition programme, which currently provides free meals to more than 9.9-million children in 19,800 schools, increases by 4.5% over the medium term.

The Treasury estimates inflation will average 3.3% over this period. It said it had not adjusted funding for the school nutrition programme in line with its lower inflation expectations as food price inflation was higher than the overall rate of inflation. The Treasury has allocated an extra R9.9bn to the provinces to help cover the compensation costs of personnel over the medium term, offering some relief to provincial education departments battling to fund posts.

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Consolidated government expenditure on basic education grows by 4% over the medium term, a marginal increase in real terms as the Treasury projects inflation will average 3.3% over the period. The basic education government is expected to increase from a revised estimate of R344.6bn in 2025/26 to R358.6bn in 2026/27. It rises to R376.3bn in 2027/28 and R387.4bn in 2028/2029. Overall spending on post-school education and training decreases in real terms over the next three years, with the consolidated expenditure budget for the sector set to grow by just 2.2%.

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