Education’s 17-year plan looks doomed

OLD SCHOOL: Geoffrey Chennells wants his son Douglas to attend Michaelhouse BASIC Education Minister Angie Motshekga’s plan to force all provinces to eliminate school infrastructure backlogs by 2030 looks likely to fail.

Motshekga set three-, seven-, 10- and 17-year targets for provincial education departments when she published her regulations on minimum norms and standards for school infrastructure in November 2013.

On Friday, her department released the detailed implementation plans of seven of the nine provincial education departments. Limpopo and Free State’s plans were missing.

Gauteng, Eastern Cape and KwaZulu-Natal would collectively require R340.5-billion over 17 years to get rid of their backlogs.

Gauteng education MEC Panyaza Lesufi said the total cost over 17 years would amount to R159-billion, while its budget forecast for the same period was R55-billion. “It stands to reason that a substantial portion of the backlogs can’t be addressed within 17 years unless required funding is available,” he said.

Even if additional funding was made available, “it is an open question whether the building industry will have the capacity to accommodate the demand to deliver within the time-frames”.

The regulations stipulated that schools built from asbestos, metal and wood and those without water, electricity and sanitation must be prioritised and dealt with within three years.

KwaZulu-Natal said it would need R59.5-billion to eliminate “all the identified backlogs”.

“Whilst the department respects the regulations on uniform norms and standards and is committed to work towards compliance, the time-frames in the regulations are unrealistic,” its report stated.

The Eastern Cape said that only “a few hundred” of its 5 584 schools did not require any renovation or refurbishment.

The Western Cape said it had already “geared itself towards the implementation.”

Yoliswa Dwane, chairperson of lobby group Equal Education (EE), said they were not happy with the quality of some plans. — Prega Govender