Quality schools key to success

There are two ways to break out of poverty. The first is by formal education, and the second is by the worker acquiring a greater skill at his work and thus higher wages,” said Nelson Mandela in his timeless statement from the dock during the Rivonia Trial.

The late president’s seminal words remind us why it should be painful for us to see our children being taught in dilapidated mud schools without toilets, water or electricity. We are working hard to replace all inappropriate schools to remedy this.

As part of national government’s R8.2-billion Accelerated School Infrastructure Delivery Initiative (ASIDI) programme, we are putting every effort into eradicating mud schools and have so far completed more than 130 new state-of-the-art school across the Eastern Cape.

As a bit of background, the ASIDI programme was launched in 2011 with the identification of 510 schools across the country that needed to be replaced or upgraded. Most are in the Eastern Cape, where some rural schools are just mud huts.

Two years later, in 2013, Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga published the Minimum Norms and Standards, a legally binding set of minimum standards for all provincial school systems in South Africa to work towards.

The document requires that every public school in South Africa has access to water, electricity, ablution facilities, security personnel and the internet.

The policy also stipulates that all schools have libraries, science laboratories and areas for physical education.

Schools for special education learners must be fully accessible.

After it was agreed that the policy would be legally binding, the national department began the ASIDI to:

Eliminate the backlogs in school infrastructure;

Upgrade the standard of schools to meet the optimum functionality levels prescribed by the Norms and Standards for Schools Infrastructure; and

Eradicate inadequate, unsafe and poor physical infrastructure by using allocated funds properly.

So why is our education lagging behind?

Many of our problems can be traced to apartheid rule. The Bantu Education Act of 1953 set out to ensure that whites received a better education than blacks, who were, according to Hendrik Verwoerd, the future prime minister then in charge of education, to be educated only to be “hewers of wood and drawers of water”.

For many years education for black children received about a fifth of the funding given to their white peers. Blacks were taught almost no mathematics or science.

Most independent church-run schools that provided a good education in black areas were closed.

That is why there has been a serious lack of education facilities in the country, especially at the foundation phase.

The majority of school sites in the programme are also in remote rural areas which are difficult to access.

We are speeding up delivery of the facilities needed to address the needs of learners in foundation phase as well as at senior primary level.

The department’s records show that through the ASIDI, 170 state of the art schools have been constructed out of the targeted 510.

And of the 170, more than 130 are in our province.

Although the backlog remains, progress is being made to address infrastructure challenges. Our children deserve the best. They are our future. That is why, through the ASIDI, we are continuously investing in improving the quality of education and education facilities to ensure we build a prosperous society.

The new schools that replace mud schools come standard with a science lab, a computer lab and a media centre, rain water harvesting tanks, a nutrition centre and a fully functional administration block with offices and a staff room.

While progress has been made in replacing mud schools with new state of the art education institutions, the provincial government is mindful that much still needs to be done ensure the dignity of learners is restored.

We are grateful to private and government partners. We are collaborating with key partners like the Department of Water and Sanitation and the Department of Health to ensure basic services are rolled out to distressed schools.

In schools where the supply of water remains a challenge, we are implementing immediate interventions such as harvesting rainwater and deploying mobile water tankers, among others, to ensure learners have drinking water and can wash their hands.

We are working hard to replace all inappropriate schools, and will continue doing so no matter how long it takes.

Phumulo Masualle is premier of the Eastern Cape