Law centre and MEC clash over unplaced pupils
THE Equal Education Law Centre (EELC), acting on behalf of the parents of the pupils attending Empumelelweni Primary “makeshift school’’ in Eerste River, said it was disappointed by Education MEC Debbie Schäfer’s “inaccurate statement” about the action taken to remedy the situation.
In a statement released last week, Schäfer said her department had found a school for all the pupils learning under the trees in Forest Village.
The statement further said: “The WCED (Western Cape Education Department) has been contacting parents over the past week to make offers of placement, and half of the pupils have already been placed at schools.
The department is still struggling to contact some of the parents of the remaining pupils, who have provided incorrect contact numbers or whose phones go to voicemail.”
Some of the parents of those pupils protested outside the provincial legislature last week, demanding that the government urgently build a school for their children. The EELC said of the 104 parents of pupils attending the makeshift school, only five have been contacted by the WCED.
“The numbers at the school grow by the day, as more parents in surrounding areas continue to enrol their unplaced children – the MEC’s statement does not correspond with what parents are currently experiencing,” said the EELC.
Schäfer said they have received a letter from the EELC, with a separate list of pupils to the one the WCED has.
Schäfer said, in their letter, the EELC acknowledged that the WCED asked for the names of additional pupils by April 9, and that they have waited until now to provide it.
She said, in the intervening period, the officials have made every effort to place all those pupils in schools.
“The list that has now been provided does not appear to be the same as the list of 210 names we had been given previously, which I referred to in my statement and confirmed could all be offered places.
“We are now verifying and crosschecking this additional list, so we can contact the parents to arrange placement.”