How much Department of Education staff get paid

The Department of Basic Education pays its employees an average of R616,313 annually, with its middle management staff far outearning their administrative peers. 

Minister of Basic Education Siviwe Gwarube revealed this in response to a parliamentary question from Nobuntu Lidumusa Hlazo-Webster. 

Hlazo-Webster asked the minister for further details regarding the size of the department’s workforce and their remuneration. 

Public servant wages have been hotly debated in South Africa, with some arguing that elevated salaries are required to prevent workers from leaving public service to work in the private sector. 

However, the wage bill has become a significant burden on the country’s finances, with the government expecting to spend over R750 billion on public servants in the current financial year. 

Paying public servants high salaries is not a problem in itself, but in South Africa, wage increases have been coupled with stagnant productivity and declining service delivery. 

As a result, the country has the third-highest government wage bill as a share of GDP after the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia and Japan. 

Only Iceland and Denmark spend more on their public service wage bill as a share of GDP than South Africa, followed closely by Brazil.

This elevated expenditure on public servant wages is one of the largest contributors to overall increases in government expenditure over the past decade, causing a surge in state debt. 

In 2008/09, South Africa’s gross loan debt amounted to R627 billion, or 26% of GDP. It has now ballooned to R5.21 trillion, or 73.9% of GDP.

The National Treasury has tried to tackle this problem through an early retirement programme, which is expected to be accepted by up to 30,000 state employees. 

This should translate into annual savings of R7.1 billion and crucially, get some of the highest-earning state employees off the government’s books. 

However, it is expected to cost the government around R11 billion in the current financial year and result in a cheaper to run, younger public service. 

How much Department of Education employees earn

Members of parliament have been asking ministers for more specific breakdowns of how much their departmental employees are paid to better understand which government employees earn elevated salaries compared to the average. 

Hlazo-Webster asked the Minister of Basic Education about the makeup of the department’s workforce, including how much they are paid and how many permanent and administrative employees work there. 

Gwarube explained that this question is difficult to answer as all teachers in South Africa are employed directly by the Provincial Education Department and not the centralised ministry. 

“Neither the Minister of Basic Education nor the Department of Basic Education is therefore responsible for the employment of public service employees and office-based and school-based educators within provinces,” Gwarube said in her response. 

As a result, Gwarube could only give data for the middle management that the department employs directly and how it pays its administrative staff. 

The Department of Basic Education has only 773 employees who work in the centralised, national department. This includes 455 administrative staff and 156 middle managers. 

Including a pencilled-in 5.5% salary increase for all public servants, the department’s total wage bill for 2025/26 is R467.41 million. This equates to an average annual salary of R616,313. 

However, this is split unevenly between the employees, with middle managers significantly outearning their administrative counterparts. 

On average, a middle manager in the department earns R765,264 on an annual basis, while the average administrative salary is only R512,210. 

The salary of all middle managers also includes the benefits they receive, while the salary of administrative staff is split between an annual salary and benefits. 

The average salary of the employees in the Department of Basic Education can be seen in the table below.