Pupils are held up at gun point during their lunch break at school. A girl has a broken bottle held to her throat in the corridor. Pupils cannot flush toilets because the ablution facilities are so blocked that the floor is already covered in an inch of sewage. Rats and mice infest the classrooms.
The pupils of Johannesburg Secondary School in Mayfair are living this nightmare.
Financial maladministration, violence against pupils, managerial complacency and sexual abuse are some of the concerns that parents raised earlier this year.
Now the school governing body (SGB) is demanding that the principal be dismissed and the government take control of the school. This would mean that the school loses its independence (as a Section 21 school) to manage its own finances, including an annual subsidy of R76 000 from the Department of Education.
“Managerial incompetence has resulted in this quagmire and allowed the principal to manage the school without any checks and balances. We feel very strongly that he should be removed and that the education department should take control of the school,” said a member of the SGB.
A national Department of Education report details problems including the school charging an “unauthorised amount for school fees”, toilets that do not flush, “parts of the school [that are] infested with rats and mice”, the Grade 12 results, which are “on a declining scale”, and a large amount of petty cash that was deposited into the principal’s bank account during the last financial year.
The report is part of the department’s whole school evaluation and school improvement plan, which is an ongoing countrywide assessment by the education department of all primary and secondary schools. Schools are monitored according to criteria that include safety, discipline, curriculum and governance and are ranked on a sliding scale of “unacceptable” to “outstanding”.
The evaluation ranks the school as “acceptable”. Thebe Mohatle, the spokesperson for the Gauteng education department, said this means that “there are certain aspects of good governance in the school while admittedly there are areas that require some intervention”.
But the SGB says that this rating is too lenient. “Unless the government intervenes fast this school is a sinking ship.”
According to the SGB, seven teachers have submitted their letters of resignation for the end of September and “60% of parents have indicated that they will be removing their children from the school next year”. The matric pass rate has dropped by 30% over the past three years.
In August a group of girls was held at gunpoint by four men during their break, an SGB member said. A few weeks earlier another man held a broken bottle to a girl’s throat and demanded her book bag.
The school’s financial management is also under fire. “We have discovered that during the first half of the school year R477 000 was spent in 97 days, which is broadly unaccounted for,” said an SGB member. “We are now faced with the impossible task of explaining to parents where their money has been spent and we have nothing to show for it.”
According to the evaluation report, the 2003 budget, which is R1,8-million (including the R477 000) was never approved. “A parents’ meeting was called at the end of last year for budget approval but the meeting was declared null and void because proper procedures were not followed according to the South African Schools Act.”
The report also notes that money for petty cash is deposited in the principal’s personal banking account and that “the amount used for petty cash is far beyond the limit set” by the government.
The SGB, which took over from the former SGB in July, told the Mail & Guardian that all attempts to solve this malaise have failed. “Any attempts to resolve this mess have simply resulted in the principal and the former SGB passing the buck.”
Mohatle said the education department will follow the evaluation report with a “school improvement plan that identifies problem areas and addresses them by re-training, capacity building and continuous mentoring”. The school is also challenged to find creative ways of dealing with identified areas of concern.
He said about 12% of the 200 schools evaluated in the past year in Gaut-eng have “indicated non-compliance to policy around the management of finances”.
But “it is not only the mismanagement of funds — the real priority for us is the mismanagement of the institution on the whole. The learners and the educators are suffering, and at the end of the day, it is years that the learners are losing,” said an SGB member.
Attempts by the M&G to contact the principal, Jayson Arthur, failed. The M&G was repeatedly told that he was out of the office at meetings.