Get the basics right and stop failing our kids

Basic education is a human right enshrined in our constitution and UN statutes. All stakeholders, especially the government, must make every effort to ensure this right is realised. We find it rather disturbing that some schools have to go out of their way to make sure the government fulfils its duties. Earlier this week we reported that the department of education had been ordered by the court to appoint four teachers to Mary Waters Secondary School in Makhanda.

There has been a teacher shortage at the school, resulting in pupils losing 124 teaching periods a week since the beginning of the year.

The school resorted to court on an urgent basis to have the posts filled, because it says the department shortchanged it by several teacher posts as it had miscalculated its post provisioning for 2022.

This is a fair argument that did not need to end up in court.

Surely, if the post provisioning was not properly done why did the department not redo it promptly or at least send teachers to do the work while the process was being reviewed?

While the disagreement was playing out, parents resorted to protests which resulted in repeatedly shutting down the school.

More learning time was lost in the process.

The school said the unsupervised classes also resulted in an increase in disciplinary issues and bullying.

The implications will be farreaching.

In February we celebrated with a lot of pride after the Eastern Cape class of 2021 improved the national matric pass rate from 76.2% to 76.4%.

Though that was marginal, it was cause for celebration as the pupils defied all the odds given the background that much learning time was lost due to Covid-19 regulations in the past two years.

How then do we hope this pass rate will be improved if basics such as staffing are not addressed on time?

Maybe we expect too much from a department that consistently stumbles from one problem to another.

It failed to meet its November 2020 norms and standards deadline, with mud schools and pit latrines still prevalent in the province.

Sadly, that comes at a time when the same department rolled back to Treasury a R205.1m infrastructure grant.

There has been a delay in the delivery of learning materials, not to mention that scholar transport has been a perennial problem. The department charged with educating our children is in fact failing them.

Generally education is the only gateway out of poverty for many children.

We implore those in the corridors of power to do their best to make sure children get a good quality basic education.

We implore those in the corridors of power to do their best to make sure children get a good quality basic education.