Cost-effective infrastructure choices in education: Location, build or repair

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to develop a model to arrive at a joint optimising strategy for capital budgeting for the construction of new school buildings and for the renovation of existing schools. This model provides a practical tool for ranking construction projects so as to yield the maximum positive impact on the education system. A key aspect of the model is that it provides the optimal mix of renovation and new construction that should be undertaken under a fixed budget constraint.The model is applied to a sample dataset from the education sector of Limpopo province, South Africa, in order to quantify the benefits of using the model. The benefits from using this model for decision making on the evaluation of new and renovation investments in school infrastructure is estimated to increase the effectiveness of these investments by up to 300 percent over the counterfactual system for making these decisions.