While opposition parties at the Bhisho legislature raised serious concerns about the state of infrastructure in many provincial state schools, the education portfolio committee said on Monday it was satisfied with the steady progress made in addressing some of those long-standing challenges.
Multiparty members of the legislature embarked last week on oversight visits to various schools in all education districts to, among other things, assess the state of readiness as the third school term commenced.
Legislature spokesperson Nombulelo Mosana said the recent visits were intended to follow up on the findings and implementation of house resolutions taken after the January school visits by legislature members.
DA MPL Horatio Hendricks said on Monday that three of the legislature’s biggest findings, including addressing of infrastructure backlogs, challenges with scholar transport and dealing with unsafe schools, had not yet been resolved after their first visit in January.
“Since the schools opened in January, the issue of scholar transport is yet to be resolved. This as close to 40,000 learners have to walk to school,” he said.
“There is still a major backlog when it comes to infrastructure, with the department needing about R8bn a year, up to year 2030, to adequately deal with such backlog.
“Unfortunately, just over R1bn is allocated a year for infrastructure maintenance, repairs and addressing the backlog, which is quite an insufficient budget.
“We found that many [schools] are still not properly fenced, still without security guards, resulting in teachers finding themselves still exposed to criminality.”
EFF MPL Zilindile Vena painted a bleak picture of the state of some rural and township schools.
He said “public schools continue to suffer the most in the hands of the ruling government which has dismally failed to eradicate pit toilets, improve school infrastructure and provide quality and well-resourced education in all public schools”.
Of the province’s 5,200 state schools, the EFF said, the majority were still without decent classrooms and safe toilet facilities.
“The lack of teacher and learner support material for the term in most of the rural and township schools still remains a great concern and contributes to poor performance.
“The shortage of teaching personnel also remains a matter of deep concern.
“Another area of concern is the appalling condition of school infrastructure,” Vena said.
He said it was disgusting that schools still went for months without having meals for pupils, saying the school nutrition crisis should be declared a human rights violation.
However, ANC MPL and education portfolio committee chair Monde Sondaba said the committee was satisfied that there were steps taken to address some of the legislature findings.
“Many of the challenges we have highlighted have been addressed, except for infrastructure-related findings,” he said.
Sondaba said they were pleased that plans were in place to address sanitation problems, however “one area we still have a challenge is the area of scholar transport”.
He said in terms of ailing infrastructure at schools, the department was close to resolving some of the problems.
One of the schools with infrastructure challenges is Vulamazibuko High in Mdantsane, where pupils recently took to the streets in protest.
In 2013, the school lost three classroom blocks which were ravaged by fire.
Meanwhile, their school hall does not have a roof , after it was blown off in August 2023.
As the grade 12 pupils at the school entered their second week of protest on Monday, a meeting between the school governing body, parents and department officials was held in a bid to resolve the ongoing crisis.
A concerned parent of a grade 9 pupil said as parents they felt that their children had been neglected as numerous calls for the infrastructure to be fixed had fallen on deaf ears.
The department’s spokesperson, Malibongwe Mtima, said on Monday that R3m had been allocated for the construction of temporary mobile classes and refurbishment of the school.
“Within 10 days, mobile classes will be delivered and ready for use, and on Tuesday there is going to be another meeting, where the district director will present the project to all stakeholders,” Mtima said.
School governing body member Thembinkosi Ntamo said this was frustrating “because we are not sure how many temporary mobile classrooms they are going to give us”.
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