The doors of learning creaked open with some difficulty as schools re-opened last month.
While provincial heads insist the start of the school year went well, reports from around the country told a different story.
The South African Democratic Teachers’ Union (Sadtu), the Centre for Applied Legal Studies (Cals) and the Education Rights Project (ERP) said reliable data was impossible to obtain, but work on the ground suggested illegal exclusions, as well as classroom conditions that do not promote learning, still affected thousands of children.
Sadtu said many pupils who failed matric last year had been turned away, particularly at poor schools. About 140 000 (30%) learners failed last year.
At one Gauteng school, Azara Secondary in Thembelihle, exclusions sparked tension. About 200 learners and parents, and several armed and uniformed police officers, were outside the locked gates of the school on the day it reopened. Unregistered pupils were still asking to be enrolled, but the principal had apparently declared the school “full” – even though only the provincial minister can make that call.
Cals has the details of a further 160 pupils denied access to schools in Thembelihle, as well as the reasons they said the schools had provided. All the reasons, including non-payment of school fees and the inability to produce report cards, were illegal.
Panyaza Lesufi, spokesperson of the Gauteng education ministry, told the meeting at Azara that 12 schools in Soweto were empty. “That’s not because they’re closed: the teachers are there. But parents are sending their children to schools where they think they [learners] will succeed.”
He also said Gauteng education minister Angie Motshekga had announced that youngsters not being in school was a “province-wide” problem.
Sipho Nkosi, Sadtu’s spokesperson in KwaZulu-Natal, said the back-to-school exercise was fairly smooth, although “there were those schools in the eThekwini area that had no stationery, let alone textbooks”. He said that in some schools the payment of school fees was used as a condition for registration.
Limpopo said it provided no transport because it ensured all its 4 300 schools are within 5km of every pupil.
But Cals’s Stuart Wilson writes in the latest edition of the South African Journal on Human Rights: “At Mopel Primary School in the Waterberg District of Limpopo province … pupils never proceed to secondary school, because the nearest is over 70km away, there is no taxi service, and it is doubtful whether largely unemployed parents would be able to afford it if there was.”
Ndo Mangala, spokesperson for Limpopo’s education department, said problems continue with the feeding scheme, with suppliers not providing enough food or of a good enough quality. He added: “Some suppliers are not supplying [food] at all for weeks.”
Sadtu’s North West provincial secretary, Charles Raseala, said the union was happy with the speed with which the department reacted to some of the immediate problems, including a lack of transport in some areas and schools damaged by recent storms. However, persistent problems include overcrowding at schools and glitches in the feeding scheme.
Unfilled teaching posts – some as a result of temporary teachers not having their contracts renewed this year – are also a problem, said Raseala. “For instance, at Itshupeng High School around 15 posts are vacant” and cannot be filled immediately as the information is still being processed by the department.
Western Cape said about 950 000 learners attended school on the first day at 171 schools in the province, and that teaching and learning did not take place “at a few schools”.
In the southern Cape, “about 100 learners weren’t picked up” (by legally prescribed free transport if the nearest school is more than 5km from home). – Additional reporting by Motlatsi Lebea, Cheri-Ann James and Lloyd Gedye