Nail-biting uncertainty over fate of farm school
As the Dias Farm School in Theescombe was due to start the academic year on Wednesday, pupils lined up for assembly and morning prayers while principal Sindiswa Tyala started counting them.
She needs 135 pupils to keep her school open, in terms of the education department’s guidelines.
She counted them as they stood in lines, 30 of them at school for the first time, some with brand new donated school shoes, others with worn-out takkies.
Tyala reached 129 pupils, but a cloud of uncertainty hung over the future of the school throughout the day.
The department of basic education wants Tyala to count birth certificates but she counts the little ones in front of her.
Twenty of the children enrolled at the school are undocumented, meaning that it will receive no money, stationery or teachers for them.
Some are the third generation of pupils to attend the school that opened in 1980.
The golden number, according to the National Education Policy Act Guidelines, is 135 pupils at primary level to keep the school open, but in August 2018 the department had already stated that Dias was to be closed after 39 years.
“The official reason was that more than one grade was being taught per class,” Renee Hoffman, who has been closely involved with the school, said.
At a public meeting later on Wednesday morning, Tyala told parents that no-one was telling her what was going on.
“The department told me nothing. All they said was to ‘‘hold on’ before giving out the books. And they wouldn’t take my calls.”
On Tuesday, ward councillor Tracy Weise and Hoffmann, who have been running a recruitment drive for the school, received an e-mail from Zwelinzama Dilima, the regional co-ordinator for the school rationalisation project in Nelson Mandela Bay, saying that the department’s “noble task” was to improve quality
education and as such the school should be closed down.
“The decision to close Dias is not only done because of last year’s number of learners in this school but numbers of learners for the past 10 years.
“Nevertheless, last year’s number of 110 learners is better than other years but this does not justify to keep this school open,” the letter reads.
Early on Wednesday, taxi drivers paid by the scholar transport programme started dropping pupils off at the school. They had not received instructions not to do so.
“I don’t have answers on this thing,” Tyala told parents.
After a while angry parents left to see officials at the department themselves.
When they returned they told Tyala that they had been told not to tell her anything.
“The department said we must keep it confidential,” one mom said.
“But they claim they know nothing about Dilima’s e-mail.
“They say they will later come and have a meeting with us. We could see Dilima just wanted to run away from us,” another parent said.
The parents and Tyala had met in a Wendy house, all of them perched on chairs meant for toddlers. Children who were supposed to start grade 1 ran into the Wendy house to speak to their mothers while Tyala phoned Dilima again from her tablet.
The call went straight to voicemail.
A parent, who asked not to be identified, said: “I don’t know what is going to happen. I live in Grogro [an informal settlement].
“We only know this school. My mom was in this school. I was in this school and now my boy is in this school. The department told us that the school isn’t closing,” she said.
“They said we must wait for a letter.” Weise said the school received notice on Tuesday that it would be closed, with children being diverted to other schools.
In 2018, the department met teachers and parents and promised a steering committee would be formed.
This, they say, has not happened.
“The parents tell us that they do not want to send their children to another school,” Tyala said.
“This is a school that receives enormous community support.”
It has been a huge struggle to keep the children in the school, clothe them and feed them – one that requires constant donations and sponsorships.
Throughout the year sponsored deliveries by the Blue Ribbon bread truck were met with smiles and many enthusiastic hands to help carry the bread that, apart from donated maize porridge, would for some pupils be the only food they got that day.
The school’s budget did not make provision for margarine or spreads, so the bread would be eaten dry.
Due to the uncertainty surrounding the school, no breakfast was prepared for the pupils on Wednesday.
So shocking was the news of a possible closure that one of the pupils’ grandmothers fainted after the meeting.
At that, a teacher came running out with water and a plate with slices of bread.
“Nobody has eaten anything today,” Hoffman said.
“They are worried and stressed.”
● Just before 7pm on Wednesday, Tyala sent a message to Hoffman saying that she had met with the governing body of the school and officials from the department of education and that it was agreed that the school would remain open.