Year of promise, or disappointment?

Schools across the country opened their doors on Wednesday for scores of pupils to begin a much anticipated academic year. For many, mostly from middle-class families, the experience of school is an exciting one. It carries much promise for quality education for a better future and access to opportunities. For others, the reality is quite the opposite. School corridors are where their dreams are shattered – mostly through no fault of their own. They are victims of a system that enables those who are better off to succeed, yet frustrates – even impedes – those who desperately need a lifeline.

Uitenhage’s Jubilee Park primary school principal Patric Korkee perhaps best captured the consequences of systemic failures in our education, such as poor infrastructure and a lack of adequate support.

“It is the first day of school and we are not contributing to education, rather we are contributing to ailments of this community including gangsterism, alcohol and drug abuse,” Korkee said.

“How are we expected to contribute meaningfully to these children’s education under these circumstances?”

If premier Phumulo Masualle is to be believed, all schools in the Eastern Cape would have received all supporting material to begin the year by January 20.

Only, as crucial as these are, they are a fraction of what is needed in order to offer children in poorer schools a shot at quality basic education.

Indeed, the increases recorded in the matric pass rate last year are somewhat an indication of welcome efforts to improve education.

However they do not tell the story of those whose poor quality of education at foundation phase condemns them to a perpetual cycle of sub-standard learning at higher levels.

More frightening, they do not tell the story of those who fell off the system along the way, only to end up in communities unskilled, hopeless and angry.

For their sake, fixing the system at its basic level is our most urgent need.