Government must come to the party on poor school infrastructure

Eastern Cape premier Oscar Mabuyane promised on Freedom Day that by 2030 this province would have eradicated mud schools. Few will believe him. It is a promise that is as old as our democracy. The deadline to eradicate mud schools is pushed out almost as often as the promise to eradicate pit toilets. It just never happens despite there being a legal obligation on all provinces to have done so as long ago as 2016. Instead, the Eastern Cape habitually sends back to the National Treasury tens of millions of rand of unspent funds intended precisely for school infrastructure.

It just takes a brief peek at recent history to show how many times this province has failed to achieve its obligations in terms of school infrastructure and sanitation.

In 2007, the Schools Act was amended, requiring the minister of education to create legally binding minimum norms and standards for public school infrastructure. After six years, dozens of petitions, campaigns and a 20,000strong pupils march on parliament, still nothing was done.

Finally, Equal Education and the Legal Resources Centre represented two dilapidated and brave Eastern Cape schools to take basic education minister Angie Motshekga to court and compel her to do so.

In 2013, the legally binding minimum norms and standards were finally promulgated.

They required every school to have at least water, electricity, internet, working toilets, safe classrooms with a maximum of 40 pupils and security.

Those norms and standards gave the Eastern Cape government three years to eradicate any schools made from mud, wood, metal or asbestos. But, 2016 came and went.

In 2018, Equal Education went back to the Bhisho high court and obtained an order essentially compelling the minister to take steps to oversee and monitor provinces’ implementation of a tightened-up version of the norms and standards so that deadlines were met.

By last year, the provincial basic education department had still failed to meet a single imposed infrastructure deadline. There have been no consequences.

The importance of the relationship between the physical environment in which pupils are taught and their learning outcomes has long been established by research.

No small wonder that our pupils in this province who are forced to learn in such awful conditions continue to struggle.

Mabuyane’s pre-election Freedom Day promises are cheap, as well as being — as the saying goes — a day late and a dollar short.

Except in this case 2030 is a decade-and-a-half too late and leaves hundreds of thousands of children out in the cold for another six years.

The government has the money. It is time it garners the will and wherewithal to do its job and properly plan, implement and spend that money instead of sending it back to the National Treasury.

How many more children must become part of a new “lost generation” before the government wakes up?

No small wonder that our pupils in this province ... continue to struggle