In a startling revelation, basic education deputy minister Dr Makgabo Reginah Mhaule said some of the huge multimillion-rand Asidi schools, built by the government in rural areas of the Eastern Cape, have turned into white elephants.
She was speaking on the sidelines of a teacher awards ceremony hosted by the University of Fort Hare-based Nelson Mandela Institute for Education and Rural Development in Mthatha on Friday.
“To us it [infrastructure challenge] is a moving ghost in the sense that parents who are economically active move from rural areas to towns and cities.
“The [accelerated schools infrastructure delivery initiative (Asidi)] programme benefited the Eastern Cape because this was a province with a huge backlog.
“So we put all our resources in to support this province. Unfortunately pupils are moving away from these rural areas and the schools we built have turned into white elephants.”
She said to make matters worse, the department faced an increasing demand to continue building schools in areas where the population was growing.
Since its inception, the department, through Asidi, built at least 126 modern schools in rural Eastern Cape communities.
Mhaule said the decision to close unviable schools was meant to benefit pupils, as a school with 50 pupils could only have two teachers, one the principal, as per the government’s post provisioning norms and standards.
The national basic education department was now contemplating building smaller schools in the future.
She said the department was building more schools in the province including Tyelinzima Senior Secondary in Coffee Bay which was swept away by floods earlier in 2023.
To address overcrowding in schools, the department had resolved to release funds for the construction of additional classrooms directly to SGBs, provided they were in a position to handle the finances.
She praised the Nelson Mandela Institute for initiating the Magic Classroom Collective to improve reading with understanding and writing in primary schools.
As part of the initiative, the institute was working with 13 rural schools to improve teaching and learning.
According to the institute’s deputy director Brian Ramadiro, the partnership had been ongoing for more than 15 years with most of the schools previously among the lowest performing across the province.
He said the initiative was aimed at empowering teachers to enable them to teach in two languages.
“We see these schools we work with as labs to create ideas that could work.
“And once we see the results, we take them to other schools,” he said.
He said the idea was that if they worked in the most difficult of settings, they could thrive anywhere.
Their programme includes developing work books in partnership with teachers from participating schools, conducting teacher training and doing demonstrations in classrooms.
The institute also ensures the schools have access to basic school infrastructure including properly lit classrooms that did not leak.
Ramadiro said they believed that to create a sustainable culture of good results, you could not teach under a tree or in a poorly maintained classroom.
One of the recipients of the awards was Meje Primary in the rural outskirts of Mbizana in the Alfred Nzo East district.
Its principal Bongile Gqamane said the school was not only located in one of the poorest areas but at some point did not even have enough classrooms.
Pupils had to be accommodated in church and community halls. This affected teaching and the school’s performance had also been compromised.
But since joining the Magic Classroom Collective, his school had become a beacon of hope, not only for rural parents and children, but for those who lived in urban areas.
“We now have more than 700 pupils on our books. Our results have improved drastically,” he said.
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