Reviewing South African Provincial Education Budgets, 2004 to 2010

This paper provides a review of national and provincial education budgets to: survey main expenditure trends in education; understand the social and fiscal contexts in which provincial education budgets are made; quantify progress in addressing input inequality; and analyze trends in spending on conditional grants. The paper tries to provide a description of the main trade-offs in provincial education budgets, and their potential impacts on learners in poor communities.