Mayhem marked the start of the new school year at Gelvandale Senior Secondary School in Port Elizabeth when an African National Congress leader took drastic action against the school’s admission policies.
Christian Martin, an ANC MPL in the Eastern Cape who serves on the legislature’s standing committee on education, brought locks and chains to the school and barricaded all the entrances, locking out principal Desmond Nickall, the staff and learners. The school’s locks were also allegedly sealed with glue.
Martin said he resorted to this action after failed attempts to meet with Nickall to raise his concerns about hundreds of learners being told they were not readmitted to the school this year, either because they had outstanding school fees or because they had failed their grade for the second time last year.
School governing body chairperson Thomas Kriel said that it is the school’s policy not to readmit pupils who had twice failed the same grade, and that ‘they should go back to the department and ask to be placed at other schools”.
The Eastern Cape education department’s representative, Phamphama Mfenyana, condemned the school’s approach, saying: ‘This kind of exclusion is not allowed. If it’s the school’s policy, it runs contrary to what the legislation says.” He said that the department would help any parents who reported such exclusion to have their children readmitted.
Gelvandale Senior Secondary has for years enjoyed a near 100% matric pass rate. As a result, said Kriel, ‘Parents simply insist that they want their child in our school because of its good reputation. They get furious if they cannot be accommodated.”
Kriel said concerns about under-staffing and school shortages in the area had been conveyed to the education department but without effect. The Eastern Cape has a shortage of 13 000 classrooms.
Kriel added that Martin’s behaviour had ‘exposed the inability of the education department, of which he serves on the standing committee, to plan properly”.
But Martin said barricading the school had achieved his aims: he finally got to speak to Nickall; failed learners were re-admitted; and an additional 200 pupils were admitted after the school had initially closed its doors when it reached its maximum intake of 1 100 learners.
Democratic Alliance MPL Donald Smiles said education in the province was already in a shambles and instead of Martin working to improve it, he was doing it a disservice. His party is intending to call for a disciplinary inquiry into Martin’s behaviour.
But Martin remained unrepentant. ‘If I must, I will do it again. I don’t have any remorse for what I did,” he said. ‘When it comes to the future of our children, I will not allow anyone to make soft targets of them.”