FAILING THE CHILDREN
Overcrowding, mud classes, stinking toilets
Glengarry Junior Secondary School in Njunga village in KZN has six mud-hut classrooms, 10 prefabs and about 60 pupils per class. There are 105 learners in a Grade 6 class.
A SHOCKING 105 pupils are crammed into one class in a school hit by overcrowding in a village in KwaZulu-Natal.
The school has 1 033 pupils and 16 classrooms, six built of mud and 10 prefabs which are also old.
Teachers said the situation was badly affecting the learning progress of many children, some of whom travel 40km to get to the school each weekday.
In the Grade 6 class with 105 pupils at Glengarry Junior Secondary School in Njunga village in Umzimkulu, three to four pupils share a desk, making it difficult for them to write. There is little space for movement in the classroom.
The situation is similar in other grades with up to 60 pupils in each class.
“The situation is bad. As a teacher, I struggle to give the learners the attention they need.
“Other times, I feel as if I am walking the road alone and the pupils are not following what I am teaching them,” said one of the teachers.
Another said the challenge was that pupils’ progress was not on the same level at the school established in 1957.
“I cannot give attention to the slow learners. All we really do is go on and hope that they will catch up. They do not really understand what they are being taught.
“During this term [third term], I realised that there are pupils who have been copying from others they share a desk with and they do not understand what they have been taught all along. We are facing a crisis here,” said the teacher.
The school starts in Grade R and goes up to Grade 9. There are two classes of each grade, except for the Grade 6s. Grade 1s have the highest number of pupils with 125.
Some of the mud classrooms have cracks and have no ceiling. The floor has holes, posing a danger to both pupils and teachers. There is a shortage of furniture, and some pupils have to kneel down and use their chairs as desks.
A foundation phase teacher said teaching a class of more than 40 pupils was difficult.
“The foundation phase is the most important in a child’s life. It is worrying because these children are not getting the attention they deserve,” the teacher said.
“They are hard to control and the only way to do that is to tell them to sleep. They cannot sleep all day now can they?”
The school was among schools visited by the National Council of Provinces last week. The delegation found that apart from overcrowding, the school had water supply problems and the pit toilets had a bad stink, posing a health hazard to both pupils and teachers.
“Sometimes when the two taps in the school run dry, we are forced to go to the river to draw water. The toilets do not flush, with pupils resorting to urinating on the school grounds. They were only opened for use in August and they are getting full,” a teacher said.
A woman who cooks for the school nutrition programme from another mud structure said the situation was not conducive for children.
School governing body chairman Wilmot Tshobeni said they desperately needed a new school to be built for them.
“The department is currently building two classrooms for Grade Rs who are accommodated in mud structures. We need the entire school to be rebuilt. Our children are suffering,” said Tshobeni.