Problems in education outlined
THERE have been some improvements to Eastern Cape schools, but the Department of Education is leaning away from the National Development Plan.
This was said yesterday by Eastern Cape legislature deputy speaker Bulelwa Tunyiswa.
She is part of a team of 13 members of the education portfolio committee who have been sent across the province this week to do follow-up visits to schools.
This follows rulings issued by the legislature in response to the committee’s findings after it had visited schools.
The re-visits started on Monday with a stakeholders meeting in Nelson Mandela Bay, where committee chairman Fundile Gade presented an outline and spoke of progress made since the schools visit in January.
Tunyiswa said yesterday that in January the committee had given the Department of Education six months to implement house resolutions.
Tunyiswa said one the issues that had since received attention was the fencing of schools.
However, issues like scholar transport and the lack of specialist teachers at some schools remained.
“We applaud the department for fencing schools,” she said. “This ensures a level of security and creates a controlled, disciplined area for teachers.
“We are, however, concerned that our curriculum is not leaning towards the National Development Plan.
“For instance, we visited a school yesterday and learned that after the accounting teacher left she was replaced with a tourism teacher.
“This means that school or community has been robbed of the opportunity of producing an accountant.”
Tunyiswa also raised concern about what she called wasteful expenditure on adverts about things the department should be doing but failed to do.
“The department would put in an advert calling for textbook requests to be submitted, but when the final reports were tabled we found that those textbooks were not requested,” she said.