Same story every year: At the start of the school year 13 800 learners in the Western Cape were without schools to attend. This number has been reduced to 258. (David Harrison/M&G)
This week marked the start of the second term of the school year but more than 200 learners are yet to be placed in schools in the Western Cape.
At the start of the year in February 13 800 learners were without schools in the province. By Wednesday this week, the number had decreased to 258, according to the Western Cape education spokesperson, Bronagh Hammond.
She said the 258 learners had been allocated schools and it was a matter of getting hold of their parents and for the learners to report to schools.
“The department is on track to resolve all of the remaining placement cases on the system,” she said.
Two organisations are demanding that the provincial department of education find a lasting solution for the problem of unplaced learners.
They have also criticised education MEC Debbie Schäfer for using financial constraints and migration as reasons the province has unplaced learners, saying it is her job to ensure that all learners have a place to study.
One such organisation is the Legal Resources Centre (LRC), which has applied for a Promotion of Access to Information Act (PAIA) for the provincial department to provide information on the steps it has taken to accommodate unplaced learners and to provide future plans for dealing with the problem.
An attorney at the LRC, Amy-Leigh Payne, said this week that the centre had applied for information through PAIA after writing to the department requesting the information and had not received a response. The Mail & Guardian has seen the letter, written on 19 April, which was addressed to, amongst others, Schäfer and the newly appointed head of department, Brent Walters. The LRC had given the department until 28 April to respond.
Hammond said she was not aware of the letter but knew about the PAIA and that the department had responded.
In the letter, the LRC asked the department to provide an anticipated date for when the remainder of the learners would be placed in schools. It also asked what steps the department had taken to ensure that the placing of learners would not cause overcrowding or a shortage of teachers.
The LRC also wants the department to provide reasons for the initial nonplacement of learners.
Payne said some of the parents the LRC had assisted with placements had applied in March last year.
“So it’s not like predominantly late applications. I think the fact that we have applications [for admissions] early, [means the department] should be able to see early in the year what things would look like for next year to make sure that everyone is placed before school starts. It is a matter of planning,” she said.
The department has said that once learners are placed in schools they will receive lesson plans for the first term that they had missed, and also that education district officials would assist schools with catch-up plans.
In its letter, the LRC also wanted to know what kind of lesson plans would be provided to the learners and asked for a copy of the catch-up plan. It also sought plans on how the department would be dealing with the prevailing problem.
“We are concerned that the [department] has faced similar crises over the last few years and are not putting in place plans for the increasing demand for learner enrollment,” reads the letter.
This is not the first time the provincial department has been questioned about unplaced learners. Equal Education and the Equal Education Law Centre wrote a joint letter in October, asking about the department’s plans for admissions in 2021.
Equal Education had asked for “clear and detailed plans” for admissions, including what contingencies were in place to support an influx of learners and what was being done to address the shortage of adequate schools in the province.
In her response, Schäfer said: “Budget cuts [by the national government] mean we cannot build enough schools for the additional 18 000 learners added to our province’s schools each year, so there will be a major struggle to find a school place every single year.”
In a statement issued recently, Equal Education said: “MEC Schäfer needs to understand that budget constraints do not absolve her of her statutory responsibility to ensure that all learners are in school, and to develop proper, clear plans to do so.”
In her statement last month, Schäfer said that if the trend of in-migration continued without additional funding, the problem would be insurmountable.
“First-time registrations of learners from other provinces and countries contribute towards this growth. We placed 21 021 new learners in 2020 and 19 452 learners in 2021, most of whom are from the Eastern Cape,” said Schäfer.
The LRC dismissed the MEC’s comments in a statement it issued last month. “The reasons why these learners apply for school admission in the Western Cape are irrelevant to the constitutional mandate of the [department] to provide access to education for all persons within its jurisdiction.”
The M&G reported in March that more than a month after schools opened on 15 February hundreds of grade one and eight learners had not been placed in schools in several other provinces. This week all the other eight provinces said their learners had been placed in schools.
Education specialist Mary Metcalfe said this week that education MECs had a duty to plan in anticipation residential areas expanding, and to work timeously so that all learners could attend school at the start of the year.
She said that in many countries, including South Africa, the quality of a school was associated with the socioeconomic status of the area.
“The urgent challenge that we face is to improve the quality of education in areas that serve poorer communities,” she said. “We have to build the confidence of communities that this is possible that the efforts of time and service and resources can make a substantial difference to all of our schools.”
Metcalfe said children should have access to schools of quality and that enjoy the confidence of residents because schooling is a community matter.
“There are too many children who are travelling into areas through spaces of anonymity and social danger without adequate support, who are getting up far too early in the morning and returning late, whose parents do not feel integrated into the community of school,” Metcalfe said.
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