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Staff Reporter
A Portfolio Committee on Basic Education delegation has expressed its concern for the “utter disregard of the work of Parliament” when a delegation led by the MEC’s office did not attend a scheduled meeting to wrap up the committee’s oversight visit to schools in the Eastern Cape.
The committee delegation last Friday concluded its two-day oversight visit to assess school readiness for the 2024 academic year. It had planned to meet with the office of the national Department of Basic Education, the Eastern Cape Provincial Department of Education (including the Office of the MEC, heads of department and senior and district officials), the provincial legislature’s Portfolio Committee on Education, the provincial House of Traditional Leaders, school governing body associations, organised labour and the South African Principals’ Association.
The leader of the delegation, Tebogo Letsie, said the committee has verified that the email address to which the invitation to the meeting was sent is the correct one and the venue was secured by the provincial department.
“At this stage, everyone claims they have not received the email and were not aware, yet they have confirmed that the email addresses we used are indeed correct.
“Many issues and challenges were highlighted over the last two days and a commitment was made by us to discuss it further at the meeting. We see this as blatantly disrespectful and a disregard for our work. We will make it clear in our report,” Letsie said.
Earlier in the day, the delegation visited two schools in the Buffalo City education district – Nosizwe High School and Bhaliti Junior School. Yesterday, they visited four schools in the Amathole education district. The delegation also visited schools in the North West province.
Letsie said the focus of the Eastern Cape visit included, among other things, infrastructure; ablution facilities; monitoring grade R/early childhood development sites, as per the departmental migration shift of 2022; delivery of learner-teacher study material; nutrition; learner transport; support to special schools; and meeting with stakeholders to discuss the state of schooling in 2024.
At Nosizwe High School, the delegation commended the school for the steady increase in National Senior Certificate results over the years. The class of 2023 obtained an 88.6% pass rate, increasing from 77.14% in 2020.
“We need to commend our schools, our learners, education officials, parents and the whole school community for making this possible,” said Letsie.
However, he emphasised to the school leadership that an increase in the pass rate is not good enough. “We need quality passes to ensure that our learners are accepted at institutions of higher learning and for the courses of their choice.
“It is very competitive in this space, so to ensure this our learners must not just be getting distinctions, but high distinctions in order to get placement.”
The committee also raised concerns about the asbestos roofing at the school. “We appeal to the authorities in the province to work together to solve this matter. Asbestos is a health risk for both learners and teachers,” Letsie advised.
At Bhaliti Junior School, the committee was confronted with the challenge of the community fighting rationalisation. The small school has 156 learners with three educators and a principal.
The delegation heard that the provincial education department has plans to merge the school with another, but the community is not in favour of this move. The school governing body said the reason for this is that the department has no plans to provide transport to the new school and the community is too poor to pay for private transport.
“This sounds like a challenge that can easily be addressed if stakeholders put their heads together. We cannot fail our children. The interest of the child needs to come first,” Letsie said.
Both schools reported challenges with theft and burglaries, vandalism, a lack of security and a lack of infrastructure maintenance. The delegation assured them that all observations made during the two-day visit to the province will be contained in its report to be tabled in Parliament. In addition, its recommendations will be included in its hand-over report to the new committee in the seventh administration.
“We are cautiously optimistic by the strides made in the province. It is a sign of a stabilising system in terms of education and improvement, despite some challenges. It must be commended,” said Letsie.
INSIDE EDUCATION