The Democratic Alliance (DA) has maintained that the Gauteng Department of Education (GDE) has reduced all quintile five schools' budgets by 64%, despite denials from the GDE, and now the party wants Parliament's Education Portfolio Committee to investigate the Matthew Goniwe School of Leadership and Governance to determine how public money is being used to fund the institution. 

Last week, the GDE rejected the DA’s claims that it had cut funding to quintile five schools by 64%, saying the claims were false, misleading, and reckless, and that they represented a deliberate distortion of information.

Speaking exclusively with Polity, DA Gauteng Education spokesperson Michael Waters said Gauteng Education MEC Matome Chiloane had a meeting with all affected school principals, in November, to inform them of the alleged budget cuts. 

“...so, the fact that the GED is now pretending that they haven't made these unjustifiable cuts to the budgets of quintile five schools is just "gobsmacking".

“They are backtracking. They obviously, I believe, are embarrassed about what they've done, because while they had to balance the budget, no doubt, they took the easiest possible route in doing so, and that was attacking children's education, the frontline services for children. Instead of looking at the fat in the budget and cutting from there,” Waters stated. 

However, in a departmental statement, Chiloane insisted that at no point had the GDE implemented a 64% reduction in school funding, explaining that the department had implemented an “interim funding realignment process”, which he said was necessitated by severe budget reductions imposed by National Treasury, and which affected all provinces.

Waters said the reduced funding, which he said was between R600 000 and R800 000 per school, would be disastrous for schools, and noted that the last assessment to determine which quintile schools should fall into was over 20 years ago, arguing that now some quintile five schools no longer necessarily fall into this classification. 

“A lot has changed in 20 years, and you cannot tell me that the same demographics or the same resources the parents had 20 years ago are the same at every school. So, coupled with the cost-of-living crisis that most families are facing, it's going to place a huge burden on overstretched families already,” he explained. 

The party had since launched a petition to stop the Gauteng provincial government’s 64% cut, to reverse it and to table a transparent, line-by-line justification for any proposed budget changes.

He argued that the money being used to fund the Matthew Goniwe School of Leadership and Governance should rather be used to fund schools that were affected by the GDE’s interim funding realignment process.

Waters claimed that the Matthew Goniwe School played “no formal role” but received millions from the GED. 

In the forthcoming 2026/27 budget, the Matthew Goniwe School would receive R397-million, Waters pointed out.

He claimed that there had been no oversight of the institution since its establishment in 2019. 

In September, the DA asked the Public Protector to investigate GDE’s alleged failure to oversee spending at the Matthew Goniwe School.

Polity has reached out to the GDE for comment and will update this article once it has been received.