Plan for unplaced learners

FOLLOWING immense pressure from organisations including the SA Human Rights Commission (SAHRC), the Western Cape Education Department (WCED) has finally come up with a plan to place 2 550 pupils not yet placed in schools.

The plan makes provision for 29 mobile classrooms for schools, as well as additional teaching posts.

By Friday the number of unplaced learners had been reduced to 1 712, the department said.

The plan comes after pressure groups, political parties, the SAHRC and the Legal Resources Centre demanded that the WCED have learners placed in schools.

Education MEC Debbie Schäfer said that while some schools already had extra classrooms available, others required mobile classrooms.

“Unfortunately, the mobile classrooms take time to construct and can’t be placed immediately.”

Schäfer said schools that had received the additional teaching posts have agreed to accommodate learners in alternative spaces until the classrooms were constructed, “…such as in the school hall or laboratory space”.

She said the important thing was that those learners who would be placed in schools, were ready to begin the second term.

“The WCED is well aware that these learners have missed a full term of work, and lesson packs for the first term will be made available at the schools where the learners will be placed.

“District officials will also guide schools on how to support learners with a catch-up plan, and will also be monitoring the learners’ assessment results for the second term to determine future support programmes,” she said.

The plan would not be possible without additional funding as funding for additional infrastructure and teachers was a problem, Schäfer said.

She also said that if the trend of in-migration continued without additional funding, the problem would become insurmountable.

In a recent letter to the WCED and Schäfer, the Legal Resource Centre’s Amy-Leigh Payne said it was concerned that the WCED had faced similar crises over the past few years and did not plan for the increasing demand for learner enrolment.

ANC provincial spokesperson on education Khalid Sayed said they were not convinced that the WCED’s plans would be sustainable.

Sayed said the issue at hand was a lack of political will by the DA to address the issue of insufficient school places.

“We reiterate our calls for the government to ensure that all the public ordinary schools, including the former model C schools, are used to full capacity,” said Sayed.

SAHRC commissioner André Gaum said it had been engaging with WCED and Schafer and tried to establish where the problem was in order to address it.

The department had told the commission that it did not have enough money to provide for the schools required, Gaum said.

He said the Commission also enquired what budget the province had allocated for education.

The Commission to see where the problem was, whether it stemmed from the WCED’s own budget allocation, whether the province did not give the department the equitable share required, or whether the problem of receiving an equitable share arose at the national level.