We need more room!
Unspent infrastructure grant short-changes rural pupils, writes
WINGS OF A DREAM: A still from Naomi van Niekerk’s animated music video ‘To All Things Beautiful’
IN the Eastern Cape, even connections to two MECs can’t get the government to build a new school. The state of Tandanani Secondary School near Mthatha is all too familiar for rural schools in the province.
Eight prefabricated classrooms struggle to contain its nearly 600 pupils, while three water tanks regularly run dry before the school day has ended. A treacherous gravel road makes it difficult to even reach the school, and pupil transport consists of one bus and 19 bicycles.
When I visited the school, the principal, Nomawethu Mkentane, was happy to see we had arrived in a light car and not a bakkie, knowing that just like her and her staff, we would feel every bump and pothole along the route. As we left the school grounds, hundreds of pupils ran towards the school bus, hoping for transport home.
There is no library and no laboratory. The toilets have not had any maintenance to speak of since 1985. The utter lack of resources makes it difficult for pupils and teachers to remain positive.
“Nothing motivates us to stay here,” said Mkentane.
Despite these setbacks, the school’s pass rate has improved from 10% in 2004 to 72% last year, thanks largely to dedicated teachers who work at least an extra hour every day with pupils.
Ironically, the school has fallen victim to its own success, as pupils from nearby communities have flocked there in the hope of receiving a better education.
This influx has only worsened its infrastructure crisis.
And it is a crisis the community has spared no effort to resolve.
Vuyo Siwahla, whose grandmother started the school, has made numerous journeys to district and provincial education offices to appeal for a new school. Officials have made promises — all of which have been tempered by refusals to commit anything to writing.
In 2004, the district office told Siwahla the school was No 1 on the infrastructure priority list. In the 12 years since then, it has moved up and down on that list, and sometimes disappeared entirely.
“We are beggars now,” said Siwahla of the regular trips he and other residents make to the district and provincial education offices.
Like the inexplicable changes to the priority list, virtually everything about school infrastructure delivery remains shrouded in mystery for the Tandanani community. Many residents have lost hope that they will ever receive a new school. A lack of transparency from the Eastern Cape department of education doesn’t help.
For the past five years, Siwahla has periodically seen workers from the Independent Development Trust, an implementing agent building schools for the provincial department. They poke around the school, take a few photos, then leave.
As it turns out, implementing agents hire community liaison officers only for certain infrastructure projects, and sometimes this only occurs late in the process due to delays by the department.
As a result, Siwahla and others are regularly left to wonder how the school governing body and other community members can seek recourse if the provincial department fails to inform them about infrastructure plans for their own schools.
Equal Education hears similar complaints throughout the Eastern Cape. Surveyors, consultants, and other workers come and go, without any explanation of what they are doing or when they will return.
Not even Tandanani’s connections to political leaders has helped.
Eastern Cape social development MEC Nancy Sihlwayi grew up in the community, and education MEC Mandla Makupula taught Siwahla in Standard 4.
On a recent visit, a member of the Eastern Cape provincial legislature took one look at the school and said: “Learners from other schools are running in spikes. Your learners are forced to run in gumboots.”
The residents of Tandanani thought they had caught a lucky break when a major corporation proposed to pay half the cost of a new school building if the provincial education department would contribute the other half. But the district director reportedly failed to commit the resources to the project and it collapsed.
“It seems like education is more of a privilege than a right,” said Mkentane.
The case of Tandanani Secondary School is, unfortunately, business as usual in the Eastern Cape. Dedicated community members and principals at schools like Tandanani are routinely stonewalled by a department that lacks capacity from the provincial office down to the districts.
Earlier this year, half a billion rand of the Eastern Cape’s education infrastructure grant went unspent by the department. This did not escape the notice of schools like Tandanani.
“We were very saddened to see the return of R500-million, because we still have no school,” said Siwahla.
At the heart of many people’s outrage at the underspending is the fact that R500-million could have built dozens of schools in the province.
Given the education crisis in the province, the department ought to be more transparent. The relationship between the school community and provincial and district education offices does not have to be antagonistic. With a better flow of information, principals, community members and the government can fix our schools together.
Fortunately, as part of the department’s recent restructuring plans, district education directors will grow in importance and capacity.
But, as always, the best-laid plans require proper implementation to become reality.
Loyiso Pulumani, spokesman for the Eastern Cape education department, acknowledged that there had been capacity constraints in the past.
“But we have spent a lot of time and money over the past year to recruit competent, professional people to change the situation rapidly. Since October, the progress speaks for itself,” he said.
“The department has brought on board a general manager, two senior architects, and two directors, both experienced quantity surveyors.
“One of the main challenges we face is that we are dependent on implementing agents for the delivery of our infrastructure mandate — it limits our capacity to deliver. Some of them have been performing below par, and that ends up hurting us.”
Despite these setbacks, the school’s pass rate has increased from 10% in 2004 to 72% last year, thanks largely to dedicated teachers who work at least an extra hour every day with pupils It seems like education is more of a privilege than a right
Pulumani admitted that the Independent Development Trust was not meeting its allocated commitments but said the department’s improved in-house capacity had “emboldened” it to take over half of the trust’s projects “and the results are quite promising”.
He promised greater transparency “in order to lessen uncertainty and anxiety in our communities still without proper structures” by publicly publishing plans and projects for the next five years.
McBrien is the 2015-16 Princeton in Africa Fellow with Equal Education in King William’s Town Comment on this: write to tellus@sundaytimes.co.za or SMS us at 33971 www.sundaytimes.co.za