Improving Education Outcomes and Inequality Through Collaboration

By Mary Metcalf, Executive Director of PILO and a National Planning Commissioner

“Collaborative work and a commitment to learning within the funder community, and between the funder community and government is a necessity if we are to maximise the impacts of both our efforts and the impact of available resources.” – Mary Metcalfe

Education as a strategic lever to eradicate inequality

Addressing inequality in South Africa is a key goal of the National Development Plan (NDP) 2030: Our Future – Make it Work, which was adopted by Cabinet in 2012 as the twenty-year integrated plan for South Africa. This followed a thorough diagnostic and extensive stakeholder consultation. Stakeholder consultation is an indispensable component of the development of a credible NDP because it is not a plan for government alone – it is a document for the whole of society and the experiences and wisdom of the whole of society must inform the plan.

In 2023, the National Planning Commission (NPC) undertook a 10-year review of the NDP which found that ‘most of our economic targets have not only been missed but are moving in the wrong direction. Objectives and targets that have to do with inequality, poverty levels, …GDP, economic growth, and investment levels, have all been missed’¹.

There are fiscal consequences of the country’s failure to meet these economic targets.  Education remains a country’s priority and is the function on which the largest amount is spent – the only item in which more is spent in servicing our debt. This is an indication of government’s commitment to the NDP recommendation that improving the quality of education and training be one of the three main development priorities between 2011 and 2030. But a consequence of missing our NDP economic targets is that there will be reductions to planned expenditure and cuts in education spending with implications for the number of teachers that can be employed, and other reductions in per-pupil spending.

Refining key development priorities

Critical moments and documents in the refining priority focus areas are:

• In May 2023 the NPC undertook a comprehensive process to develop a set of recommendations for government and civil society as to what should be key priorities for government in Education and Training (Chapter 9 of the NDP) in the five years before 2030. The key criteria adopted by the NPC in developing these recommendations were that the priority focus areas should contribute to the achievement of greater efficiencies whilst improving quality and reducing inequity. The NPC adopted the ECD Advisory on Early Childhood Development:  Effective Cross-Departmental and Inter-Governmental Coordination in Early Childhood Development in December 2023.
• This was followed by the NDP Call to Action: Together We Must Support All of Our Children to Thrive in July 2024, which details the call to government at national, provincial and local levels and the different components of civil society and outlines the roles that could be played by each.
• In September 2024, the NPC adopted an Advisory on Basic Education: Priorities for the Medium-Term Development Plan, 2024-29 – Improving Planning to Improve Literacy and Numeracy². The advisory proposes that improving planning to improve reading and numeracy be a priority for at least the next five years. This focus has the potential to contribute to the achievement of greater efficiencies whilst improving quality and reducing inequity by improving these foundation skills.  Extensive consultation with stakeholders and the DBE informed the process and its outcomes and IPASA and its members were amongst the organisations that contributed to the development of the content.

Highlights from the NPC Advisory   

The 2024 NPC Advisory on Basic Education states that improving literacy which includes both reading and writing (with comprehension) and numeracy from the foundation years would significantly accelerate progress by addressing the systemic inefficiencies of failure and repetition, and in the multiple long-term, personal and systemic consequences of poor learning foundations on subsequent performance, and retention. Improving learner performance in early grade reading and maths would minimise subsequent failure and repetition.

The advisory also proposes that evidence-informed and rigorous planning is needed nationally and provincially. This must be aligned with resourcing across clear timeframes and must be accompanied by monitoring and reporting on both implementation and on progress against agreed indicators which must then inform timeous corrective action. This planning must realistically address the inequities of resourcing across and within provinces that impact on performance so that the system achieves greater efficiencies, improved quality and more equitable outcomes. The advisory stresses that provinces have the primary responsibility, in financial terms, for ensuring that schools have the necessary resources to teach literacy and numeracy, and whatever national plans are made for education activities, can only be implemented if these can be prioritised for funding at provincial level.

One of the seven recommendations in the advisory is that government should incentivise partnership funding to improve literacy and numeracy, and specifically partnerships with the philanthropy sector.   “The DBE’s wish to identify funding from the fiscus for interventions aimed specifically at enhancing quality in targeted schools in line with the spirit of the NDP is supported.  A specific grant at national level with a focused priority on interventions with clear, evidence-informed plans aiming to improve performance in literacy and numeracy in the early years could be used as a basis for national partnership funding with the philanthropy sector.  Motivations for this would include: complementing the fiscal resource base from private resources for targeted interventions to improve efficiency, equity, and quality in improving literacy and numeracy in a resource constrained environment; that obligatory and rigorous monitoring and evaluation would contribute to learning about systemic improvement in literacy and numeracy and improve professional practice in participating districts/ provinces; and would result in demonstrable learning gains. It is recommended that the Minister leads a process for this to be given consideration by Treasury for the MTEF period (2025/9) and, if supported, a process established to actualise this”.

This recommendation is key, and the NPC is hopeful that the Minister of Basic Education will act on this recommendation and lead the necessary engagements to action this advice.

Collaborative initiatives

Some philanthropies, some of them which are IPASA members,  have already been working intensively on a collaborative initiative which would be well positioned to contribute to these processes.   This collaboration has the potential to use donor funding to leverage additional public funding and to collaboratively direct these to where it matters most for maximum impact. It also has the potential to deepen understanding of system improvement across different contexts by rigorously documenting learning and sharing to inform the work of both government and philanthropy.

The challenges in the education sector are too complex, and the needs can be overwhelming in our resource constrained environment.   Collaborative work and a commitment to learning within the funder community, and across the funder community and government is a necessity if we are to maximise the impacts of both our efforts and the impact of available resources.

As the NPC proceeds with the diagnostic work that will inform the next NDP (2030-2050), it will continue to work with stakeholders and government in developing a strategic and evidence-based understanding of what needs to be done in education so that we achieve our broad national development goals. The learning within IPASA and its perspectives will be invaluable in this process.

¹ 10 Year Review of the NDP 2012 – 2022, page16).

² This will be available on the NPC website once it has served before Cabinet as advice from the NPC.