Shuffle fear spurs Angie
Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga is under extreme pressure – including, among other things, a possible Cabinet reshuffle – which explains her haste in pushing to have schools reopened at almost any cost.
A dire undersupply of face masks as suppliers overstated their capability to deliver was noted by the National Education Collaboration Trust as contributing factors to the school reopening date being pushed back to 8 June, reports the Review Online.
Only Gauteng and the Western Cape had been fully prepared to accept Grade 7 and Grade 12 pupils at school on Monday, had the date not been changed to 8 June.
This was announced this week during a briefing by Godwin Khosa, chief executive of the National Education Collaboration Trust, when he highlighted parts of a report prepared towards the end of last week.
The trust’s task, he said, was to monitor and evaluate the readiness of schools ahead of the date when pupils in Grade 7 and Grade 12 were supposed to return to school.
This date was, however, changed after lengthy discussions on Saturday between Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga, the Council of Education Ministers, teacher unions and governing body associations.
The Northern Cape, Free State, North West and Eastern Cape were all regarded as medium risk.
Schools in Limpopo, Mpumalanga and KwaZulu-Natal had been seen as high risk in terms of readiness to open on 1 June.
Khosa highlighted that these observations were made based on verifiable information supplied by the provinces ahead of
Saturday’s meeting.
He added that the trust had observed anxiety over the reopening of schools in certain provinces and the department had been at different levels of preparedness in various provinces.
He attributed this to, among others, the fast pace at which personal protective equipment (PPE) had to be procured and the varying ability of the provincial departments to respond to the task of preparing schools to reopen with safety measures in place.
Rand Water, he said, was also making progress in terms of water supply to schools where there was a dire need.
“The closer we got to what the blockages were, the more we realised that part of the challenge was on the supply side.
“There was a dire undersupply of masks. Some suppliers overstated their readiness to deliver and this had a knock-on effect on the pace of delivery.”
From an administrative point of view, he said supply chain processes on a provincial level could not measure up to how fast PPE should have been procured, as the initial arrangement was that this was supposed to have been done through Treasury.
This was, however, later changed to a new system.
He said the decision to instead postpone the reopening of schools by a week was based on lack of readiness, what factors had been preventing readiness, what the health and safety risks were and observations with regard to the system.
“Although much work had been done in the past three to four weeks, the absence of emergency response systems in schools made it difficult to manage the preparations,” Khosa said.
He added tracking and verification of personal protective equipment had found readiness was in different stages in different areas.
Based on this data from school surveys, it was decided that it was very unlikely schools would be ready to reopen on 1 June.
An increasing number of schools were meeting the readiness requirements. – Caxton News Service