THE Gauteng education budget was this year increased from R26,4-billion to R27,1-billion and of that 74% will be spent on salaries

Gauteng education MEC Barbara Creecy presented her budget in the legislature on Friday. Creecy announced that the department would expand access to pupils with special needs.

"In the next two years we want to have one full service school in every district. Our approach to inclusion is to build a seamless system between ordinary schools, special schools and the education support services.

"With the implementation of the early identification programmes, there has been a shift to a progressive support system spread across a range of facilities, including mainstream schools, full-service schools and special schools," Creecy said.

She also announced that the department was ready to implement the new district office model.

"The new district office model focuses on multi-disciplinary teams that work in school clusters and circuits. Ideally, circuits will consist of a number of school clusters in close proximity to each other with a representative mix of dysfunctional and functional schools," Creecy said.

The department is going to establish at least three to four circuits per districts with a maximum of 45 schools. Each circuit will have three to four clusters of between 10 and 15 schools.

The district teams, who will be trained in the next few weeks, will focus on turning around the 10 most dysfunctional schools in the district.

Creecy said another important issue was early childhood development, especially the universalising of Grade R.

Meanwhile, Democratic Alliance's Khume Ramulifho has criticised how the budget has been used previously.

"This programme has been characterised by under spending. Despite promises to spend the budget allocated, it has never happened," said Ramulifho.