As hundreds of Eastern Cape parents struggle to find a school for their children, residents of Zwelitsha outside King William’s Town have slammed the provincial education department for failing to reopen Nompendulo High School following its closure last year.
According to a letter sent to the Dispatch by the school’s task team chair, Solomzi Ndyebi, the school was closed in January last year due a “combination of many factors such as numbers of pupils, and the school’s performance and management issues”.
He said the department had promised to develop a plan for the redevelopment of the school as a technical high school in January this year.
Ndyebi accused the department of failing to communicate with the community.
“The communication strategy to reach out to the communities was non-existent and infrastructural plans could also not be developed to guide this development.”
He said the department had failed to attend a community meeting last year.
“The department officials did not pitch up for this agreed meeting and there was no apology from the department. This attitude is considered disrespectful, exhibits dishonesty and displays intransigence of the department on their view to unilaterally close all the schools in the townships and villages.”
During a visit to the school on Tuesday, the Dispatch found that some classrooms had been vandalised, the grass remained uncut and school furniture was missing.
But provincial education spokesperson Loyiso Pulumani said the school would be reopened next week.
“The task team overseeing the reorientation of Nompendulo High into a technical high school has been working flat out throughout last year in preparing the groundwork for the reopening of the school.”
0 of 4
He said an administrator was contracted to oversee the logistical groundwork for the opening and the district office provided support and advocacy for the school.
“The district is working with the task team to finalise issues related to admissions and there remains every intention to open the school on February 3 as per the resolution of community meeting held on Sunday January 26. Admissions have already started and the school is about to take off,” Pulumani said.
The Dispatch reported last week that as many as 500 pupils might not have a place at provincial schools. Hundreds of parents have been seen anxiously queuing outside the education offices in the past two weeks as officials worked on the crisis of late applications and those which according to some parents were botched.
Pulumani did not answer questions about the Buffalo City Metro Inner High School planned to accommodate thousands of unplaced pupils this year.
The department of education failed to complete the building of the new R100m Grens Primary School last year.
Grens Primary, currently based in Arcadia, was set to move into the new school building in Grens High School to make way for the inner-city high school. The move was supposed to have happened in June 2019 to ensure the inner-city high school started operating in January this year.
Would you like to comment on this article?
Sign up (it's quick and free) or sign in now.
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.