Following a court battle and power outages, the Gauteng education department is reviewing its decentralized funding model, arguing that school governing bodies lack the financial expertise to manage rising municipal bills.
The Gauteng Education Department will review the existing model that will allow school governing bodies (SGBs) to independently determine how their budgets will be spent in a bid to cut schools' municipal debt and prevent them from being left in the dark.
The move was announced by Education MEC Lebogang Mel at a media briefing at Lyndhurst Primary School on Sunday, 17 May 2026, following a Pretoria High Court ruling earlier this month ordering the Tshwane Municipality to restore electricity supply to all schools that had been disconnected due to non-payment.
By the end of March Gauteng schools had accumulated municipal debt of up to R583.9 million over 60 days. The City of Johannesburg has the largest share of this at R390.7-million, followed by the City of Ekurhuleni (R75.14-million) and the City of Tshwane (R51.7-million). Gauteng schools also owe a debt of R6.32 million to Eskom.
As a result of the unpaid loans, schools across the province have faced disruption in electricity and water supply.
This debt is caused by factors such as unpaid historical debt, overcharging of schools by municipalities, weak systems for disputing erroneous bills, and “misalignment” between the annual increase in municipal tariffs and the annual incremental allocation provided to schools…