Africa’s best performing students (those in the 95th percentile) were below the average scores achieved by students in Singapore, Chinese Taipei, the Republic of Korea, Japan, Finland, Slovenia, and the Russian Federation.<sup>47</sup> In health, despite steady improvements, South Africa still has comparatively high levels of maternal and infant mortality by middle-income country standards while its level of health spending (public and private) of just over 8 percent of GDP is comparatively high.<sup>48</sup> Another important consideration is how spending per student in education varies by race. One of the major features of apartheid social spending was the large gap in per capita spending per school child: per capita funding for white students was 10 times that of African learners. Remarkably, the gap in public financing based on a student’s race has been eliminated: while in the early 1990s the average white child received a spending subsidy for education that was 4.5 times as much as that if a black child, the disparity was eliminated by 2006.<sup>49</sup> Any remaining gap in spending per pupil is caused by the fact that more highly qualified teachers tend to be concentrated in richer schools, implying a slight bias in salary expenditure per student to these schools, but this is virtually balanced by the higher allocations of spending on Norms and Standards in poorer schools. Although it is true that schools in more affluent neighborhoods are able to supplement state resources with privately funded school fees, the public financing of schools is more or less equal. As a result, public spending per student averaged R 11,000 in 2011 and about 78 percent of learners (more than 8 million students) in 80 percent of public schools (close to 20,000 schools) benefited from no-fee schools.<sup>50</sup>

# _Education_

With these important considerations in 100% mind, the results for education 90% show that when 80% we “monetize” education 70% spending, it 60% disproportionally 50% benefits those at the bottom of the 40% distribution: i.e., it 30% is progressive in absolute terms (see 20% dashed red 10% concentration curve in figure 13). 0% Reflecting 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 relatively high Source: Own calculations based on IES 2010/11.

Figure 13. Progressivity of education spending by category : concentration curves for transfers and Lorenz curve for market income <!-- Start of picture text --> 100%<br>90%<br>Lorenz for Market Income<br>80%<br>In-kind Transfers Total<br>70% Pre-school<br>60% Primary School<br>50% Secondary School<br>College education<br>40%<br>Adult education<br>30%<br>University education<br>20%<br>In-kind Education<br>10% Population Shares<br>0%<br>0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10<br><!-- End of picture text --> levels of spending as well as high enrollment rates (over 97 percent participation for 7-to-15-year-olds and 83 percent for 16-to-18-year-olds),<sup>51</sup> the poor benefit from primary and secondary education spending to a greater extent than the wealthier. However, they derive relatively less benefit relative to higher-income groups from postsecondary and university education because of lower rates of attendance by the poor at these institutions. Spending

> 47 Presidency of the Republic of South Africa 2014

> 48 Presidency of the Republic of South Africa 2013.

> 49 Van der Berg 2006, 2009.

> 50 2014, The Presidency of the South Africa, Twenty-Year Review.

> 51 National Planning Commission, 2011, “National Development Plan: Vision for 2030”.

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