Estimating Wasted Financial and Human Resources in the South African Public School System - a Data Envelopment Analysis

In South Africa, 12 230 191 or 95 per cent of learners are registered in primary and secondary public schools presided over by the nine provinces. The provincial education spending annually constitutes approximately 40 per cent of total provincial expenditure but the general quality of education spending and outcomes remain poor. This points to the existence of inefficiencies in the education sector, warranting a scientific investigation.|METHODSThe present study uses Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) to determine the technical efficiency/inefficiency of the macro role-players (the nine provinces) in the public education sector in South Africa. A DEA model mathematically identifies the most efficient decision-making unit (DMU) which forms the efficiency frontier (benchmark) against which the model estimates for all the other inefficient units (below the frontier), relative inefficiency scores. The firms with scores of 100 per cent are technically efficient and those with scores lower than 100 per cent are technically inefficient. The 2017/18 total education expenditure (TEE) and the learner-to-educator ratio (LER) are the inputs and the selected output variable is the number of public secondary schools attaining the national senior certificate (NSC) pass rate of 60 per cent or more.|RESULTSThe mean technical efficiency score for all nine provinces was 97.9 per cent. KwaZulu-Natal, Limpopo and Northern Cape were efficient and the other six provinces were inefficient.|CONCLUSIONSThe six inefficient provinces were wasting resources equivalent to R24.7 billion in the 2017/18 fiscal year. It is recommended that authorities in the six inefficient provinces draw lessons from KwaZulu-Natal, Limpopo and Northern Cape to bring efficiency up to the benchmark. The savings in resources (costs) could be re-allocated for re-training existing and appointing an additional 9 684 teachers. This could result in smaller class sizes and improve educational outcomes.