No ID book, no food for 'ghost pupils'

Thousands of schools in three provinces are struggling financially because they get no funding for pupils who do not have birth certificates or identity documents.

The Eastern Cape, KwaZulu-Natal and Limpopo provincial education departments are making payments to schools based on the number of pupils with valid documentation, and not on the school's total pupil enrolment.

This means schools are losing between R995 and R1,243 - depending on the province - for each child they enrol who does not have an ID.

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The reason is to clamp down on "ghost" pupils. The auditor-general views payments for pupils without valid documentation as fruitless expenditure.

Eastern Cape education spokesman Mali Mtima said his department was saving hundreds of millions of rands by withholding the transfer of payments to pupils who did not have IDs, passports or study permits.

The Legal Resources Centre in Grahamstown said it planned to approach the high court to force the department to fund all pupils in a school.

Cecile van Schalkwyk, a candidate attorney at the LRC, said: "Schools are forced to redistribute their resources to fund all the learners ... This has a particularly negative impact on school nutrition."

She said there were several reasons pupils could not get documents: they could have been abandoned or orphaned, "or simply don't have access to the documents required by the Department of Home Affairs".

KwaZulu-Natal education department spokesman Muzi Mahlambi said: "We don't want as a province to keep people who are illegal in the country ... We must know if you can't get an ID why you can't get an ID."