The NECC and the provincial education department clashed as pupils returned to school in the Cape this week, writes Justin Pearce
CHAOS greeted the beginning of the school year in Cape Town this week as Western Cape schools opened amid conflicting instructions from the National Education Co-ordinating Committee and the newly formed provincial education department.
Pupils turned away by overflowing township schools reported to registration centres set up by the NECC on the grounds that the department did not have a coherent strategy to meet the needs of pupils.
Last week, before schools opened, both the NECC and ANC education specialists in the province expressed their concerns about the lack of direction from the department on how to implement the new policy of free and compulsory primary education for all. The NECC’s response was to set up registration centres around the townships, where children who were denied a place at schools could register their names.
The NECC would then attempt to accommodate these pupils in empty school buildings, and have them taught by the qualified teachers who are currently unemployed. Asked where salaries for these teachers would come from, NECC regional secretary general Sihle Moon replied that this was the state’s responsibility.
This approach was prompted by the fear that children who were turned away from a school on registration day would be left outside of the system, and would be left behind in the event of new schools becoming available. This fear in turn stemmed from the position taken by the department in a circular sent to school principals at the beginning of the year: schools were urged to accept new enrolments until they reached a specified pupil/teacher ratio — 40-1 for primary schools,
35-1 for high schools. This contrasts with the policy in Gauteng where principals were instructed to take as many children as enrolled, and to sort out the problems later.
Moon said the department ought to have known that these targets were unrealistic, since last year many classes in Department of Education and Training schools already numbered 60 or more. Several township schools told the Weekly Mail & Guardian they had received their instructions from the department too late, or not at all.
Education MEC Martha Olckers condemned the initiative taken by “certain organisations” — implicitly the NECC — saying that it was “thwarting the attempts of the department to enrol pupils at schools”.
She also accused the NECC’s centres of not being open as promised, so that children gave up trying to register and their names were not on any records. Moon dismissed this claim as “mischief making”.
However, in the same statement Olckers acknowledged the “serious shortage of classrooms as well as of teachers in townships”.
The situation was aggravated by the inaccessibility of both parties: Moon claimed that Olckers and her staff did not report to their offices before last Friday. But the NECC no longer has an office in Cape Town, so the only way the organisation can be contacted is via Moon’s pager.
Olckers said the department had issued no guidelines to model C schools on whether to enforce the payment of fees, saying this was the prerogative of the school committee.
Most of the model C school principals who spoke to the WM&G said, however, that they would not turn away children whose parents could not afford to pay fees.
Yet most model C principals also reported that the numbers of black pupils enrolling was not significantly more than in the past few years. Compared to the large numbers of pupils who turned up at the NECC’s registration centres, this suggests that the majority of black pupils and parents were not aware of model C schools as an option.
Former coloured schools, on the other hand, reported marked increases in enrolment this year. These schools, which for African pupils are geographically more accessible than the model C schools, have enrolled growing numbers of African children since being legally deracialised in 1990, a trend which continued this year.
The NECC and the department finally met on Wednesday evening in an attempt to find common ground.
The crisis in education in the Western Cape is set to deepen this year, as a result of cutbacks in the province’s education budget owing to the fact that it is better provided for than most other provinces.
Olckers said that while more teachers would be allocated to the former DET schools, the overall number of teaching posts would have to be reduced from April 1 when the new budget comes into effect. Critics, including the Western Cape ANC, have insisted that the first step must be to streamline the bureaucracy created by the merging of the old racially-based education departments. Olckers dismissed the ANC’s argument as simplistic: “While we want to keep all the teachers, we can’t have insufficient administrative staff to serve the department’s needs,” she said.