Daily Dispatch
Budget rises, little to show
SCHOLAR transport programmes have always been an enormous challenge for provincial governments in South Africa. The result is that nationally some one-third of children from indigent backgrounds who need scholar transport don’t get it.
It was recently argued in court that the Eastern Cape figures were far worse than the national average. Here only about 60 000 pupils are transported to school while 90 000 who qualify are left to their own devices.
For too many years there has been a policy vacuum at both national and provincial level. The national policy on scholar transport remained in draft form for six years after first being published in 2009. In the Eastern Cape there has been complete policy confusion, which the education department has admitted has led to children who don’t qualify for scholar transport getting it, while many who do qualify don’t.
The budgetary implications have been enormous. Over a period of three years the budget for scholar transport doubled from R206-million to R432-million and yet, inexplicably, the number of pupils benefiting remained exactly the same.
And, the transport provided is still not consistent or safe. This week the Dispatch reported that one transporter was found by traffic officials to have double the number of pupils his bus was legally licensed to carry.
Cabinet finally adopted a national policy in May this year. It unfortunately falls somewhat short of some of the most basic requirements for public policy. It fails to provide proper criteria on who qualifies for pupil transport or proper guidelines on quality and safety standards for transportation of pupils.
But, at least there is something on paper and that will hopefully inspire the Eastern Cape to quickly complete its own draft policy.
What should focus the minds of its drafters is a recent high court judgment ruling that scholar transport for those who need it is integral to the right to a basic education. And the right to a basic education, unlike most other socio-economic rights, is immediately realisable.
This means the state cannot take refuge in the usual excuse of not having the requisite resources.
The high court ruled that the right to education “is meaningless without teachers to teach, administrators to keep schools running, desks and other furniture to allow pupils to do their work, textbooks from which to learn and transport to and from school at state expense in appropriate cases.”
It should not be necessary for the court to keep on stating the obvious to this provincial government. Scholar transport has been a disaster for two decades. The stark fact is that without transport to school many children who live far away from school, simply don’t get an education. That cost is simply too high for this province and for children who, without an education, stand little or chance of escaping the poverty cycle.