{"id":18348,"date":"2019-07-09T20:10:46","date_gmt":"2019-07-09T20:10:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.englishforums.com\/news\/?p=18348"},"modified":"2019-07-09T20:10:46","modified_gmt":"2019-07-09T20:10:46","slug":"kwazulu-natal-budget-health-education","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.englishforward.com\/news\/kwazulu-natal-budget-health-education\/","title":{"rendered":"KwaZulu-Natal spends most of its budget on health and education"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">The South African province of KwaZulu-Natal, located on the south-eastern coast of the country, <\/span><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.treasury.gov.za\/documents\/provincial%20budget\/2019\/4.%20Guide%20to%20the%20Budget\/KwaZulu-Natal%20-%202019%20Budget%20Summary.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">has decided<\/a> to spend the majority of their government funding on health and education.<\/strong><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-weight: 400\">According to the latest budget reports, the two departments will allocate <strong>more than seventy-six percent (76%) of the budget allowance for the whole province to these two departments.<\/strong> This amounts to nearly one hundred billion South African rands (R98.8bn).<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-weight: 400\">In a recent speech, local MEC Ravi Pillay explained that <strong>forty-one percent (41%) of the whole budget would go towards education, while another thirty-five percent (35%) will be explicitly allocated for developing the health system.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<h2><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Health and education budgeting<\/span><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">According to the KwaZulu-Natal Provincial Treasury budget report, the reason to dedicate this significant portion of all funding to health and education aims to <strong>boost these departments in the fastest way possible.\u00a0<\/strong><\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-weight: 400\">The main reason behind this decision was the fact that both these sectors are massively understaffed. This is why <strong>the majority of these funds will go towards finding and attracting new personnel for the two departments.\u00a0<\/strong><\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-weight: 400\">When it comes to education, Mr. Pillay explained that the province needs a significant revolutionization of the system. To this, <strong>the Department of Education has decided to close small primary schools (with less than fifty students)<\/strong>, and divert the funding these institutions have been receiving to larger schools.<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-weight: 400\">A portion of the budget will also go towards <strong>modernizing classrooms and improving school facilities.<\/strong> This will happen through the purchase of <strong>modern technology like tablets and smart boards for classes, and an upgrade of already existing sports and recreational infrastructure in schools.\u00a0<\/strong><\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-weight: 400\">This decision comes in a moment when UNESCO and the World Economic Forum are adamantly expressing <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.englishforums.com\/news\/wef-global-education-change\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">concerns<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> regarding the global development of education.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The South African province of KwaZulu-Natal, located on the south-eastern coast of the country, has decided to spend the majority of their government funding on health and education. According to the latest budget reports, the two departments will allocate more than seventy-six percent (76%) of the budget allowance for the whole province to these two [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":18349,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[27,3],"tags":[235,452,666,828],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.englishforward.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18348"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.englishforward.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.englishforward.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.englishforward.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.englishforward.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18348"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.englishforward.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18348\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.englishforward.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18349"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.englishforward.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18348"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.englishforward.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18348"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.englishforward.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18348"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}