Grade seven to nine learners at the Bovaal Secondary School in Bothaville, Free State, have not been taught six of their 10 subjects since the beginning of the year.
The school is one of thousands of farm schools the 1994 government inherited from apartheid. Situated on private land, they were originally intended for the children of farm workers. Post-1994, the state has been negotiating with farm owners on the transfer of ownership of these schools.
Negotiations on Bovaal are still under way, the Bothaville district director, Samuel Mokgobo, told the Mail & Guardian this week.
As with all such schools since 1994, though, the curriculum and other school provisions are the constitutional responsibility of the state. President Jacob Zuma has dedicated the 2010 Fifa World Cup to combating enduring inequalities in school education and farm schools represent one of the starkest forms of this.
This week the M&G visited Bovaal, which is isolated within hectares of farmland. The school principal, Ngoelesh Masitsa, declined to talk to the M&G, saying that, as an employee of the Free State education department, he is not authorised to speak to the media.
But the M&G understands from well-placed local sources that learning could soon grind to a complete halt if the department does not intervene. The school has 116 learners and six teachers.
Basic infrastructure such as sanitation has collapsed and teacher morale is low as staff struggle to cope with impossible workloads. An attempt to alleviate the load by implementing ‘multigrade teaching” — when teachers teach two or more grades simultaneously — was abandoned after learner failure rates soared.
But since the start of the year grades seven to nine learners have had no classes in six subjects — Afrikaans, Sesotho, arts and culture, life orientation, technology and economic management science. District education offices throughout the country are meant to be the links in the chain between individual schools and provincial education departments.
But the M&G understands the district office responsible for Bovaal has not responded to the school’s repeated pleas for assistance.
‘Initially we thought the problem was with the principal,” one source said, ‘but then he showed us documentary proof of his correspondence with the district office.” It has become a norm for the school to receive textbooks and other materials late, sometimes only in the second quarter of the year.
‘In most instances teachers use only one textbook, for which they pay from their own pockets and which they share with their learners during lessons,” one source said.
‘This makes it extremely difficult for learners and teachers, particularly those who teach maths and science, because some aspects cannot be rendered only theoretically,” the source said.
The majority of learners also commute very long distances to the school — between 14km and 40km. The school day is meant to start at 8am but most learners arrive at least an hour late.
The Free State provincial education department recently revoked its decision to withdraw learner transport in remote rural and farming communities after a public outcry. But there is still no state-supplied transport for learners at Bovaal.
National education policy obliges the state to work towards reducing commuting by learners to a maximum of 3km in the long term. Adding to the pressure on Bovaal’s learners is the fact that the last time they had any meals supplied by the national schools nutrition programme was at the beginning of the year.
The M&G understands this stems from the provincial department’s decision to terminate the contracts of certain food suppliers and to stop the payment of grants for the feeding scheme directly to schools, which are now supposed to receive these funds from district offices. Mokgobo provided no information other than that negotiations between the state and the school’s farm owner were continuing.
The struggle continues — case by case
In 1994 the post-apartheid government inherited thousands of schools situated on private farms that owners had built for the children of farm workers. A 2005 ministerial committee on rural education highlighted the poor quality of education provided by public schools on private properties.
In its report it said that in 1996 about 639 000 learners attended farm schools and that by 2000 this number had decreased to 256 000. The report also cited a Human Rights Watch study estimating that there were 3 500 farm schools as of 2004.
One of the committee’s recommendations was to create a legislative framework to regulate how the land on which these schools were situated could be transferred to the state. Negotiations with farm owners have proceeded on a case-by-case basis.
The policy has sometimes involved closures, mergers between rural and farm schools and the expropriation of land.
The department of basic education told the Mail & Guardian this week that, as of May this year, 2 641 public schools remained on private property, agreements had been concluded between the state and owners in 1 829 of these cases and 812 are yet to be resolved.
The policy has led to some landowners — who demanded financial compensation for ‘improvements” to their property represented by school buildings — physically preventing learners from attending school on their properties.
But some farmers have donated their land to the government to assist with providing quality education for needy children. But where farmers have been hostile, government maintenance or improvements of schools has been difficult to achieve because legislation does not allow public education funds to be spent on private property.