Learners still stuck without scholar transport months into school year
EC departments taken to court by no-fee schools, NGO
No-fees schools and an education organisation are taking the Eastern Cape departments of education and transport to court for failing to supply scholar transport.
Khula Community Development Project — an NGO based in Peddie advocating for access to schools for children in poor communities — Mneketshe Junior Secondary, Seaview and Toyise Senior Secondary schools, represented by the Legal Resource Centre (LRC), recently filed an urgent application in the Makhanda high court.
They are demanding the departments provide scholar transport for their learners and thousands more across the province. They also want catch-up support for those learners who missed school because they had no transport.
The applicants want the court to order the departments to decide on and finalise outstanding applications for scholar transport within 15 days of an order being granted; to provide reasons for rejecting any application and allow for an appeal; and to provide the transport within 10 days of successful applications.
The court is also being asked to declare that the departments’ failure to implement its scholar transport policy amounts to a violation of pupils’ right to education.
Mneketshe Junior Secondary, a no-fees public school in Mantlane near Flagstaff, serves villages in a 10km radius, according to a supporting affidavit filed by Nkosiphendule Ndlebehangu, the SGB chairperson.
More than 140 learners need transport. Pupils should qualify for transport if they live more than 5km from the nearest public school. The school has never benefited from the scholar transport programme.
“Learners from three villages have to walk more than 5km through bushes, streams and a river to get to school. This is unsafe.
“During the rainy season, parents put learners’ school bags, uniforms, towels and lotions into buckets and drums and carry these across the river,” said Ndlebehangu.
Desperate parents tried to organise private transport, but this only lasted two months as nearly all the parents are unemployed and rely on social grants, said Ndlebehangu.
For more than a decade, the school’s requests for transport has received no response. This led to many learners dropping out, or having to leave their parents and to find accommodation closer to the school.
Last year, parents and the school set up a makeshift satellite school in a one-room mud structure to counter the absenteeism and dropout rates.
It was neither funded nor sanctioned by the education department, which meant the SGB had to pay the teachers with its limited resources.
This year, the school was informed that only 45 of 143 learners it had identified for scholar transport would be catered for.
But Ndlebehangu said no further communication was received as to when transport would begin.
The court papers, drawing on figures from parliament, state that on average between 2018 and 2022, 19,000 learners lacked transport.
The papers cite premier Oscar Mabuyane as saying the province can only afford to transport 90,000 learners for 2024. This would leave 50,000 learners without transport, according to the founding affidavit of Petros Majola, Khula Community Development director. He said systemic failures included recurring nonpayment of service providers.
Provincial education spokesperson Mali Mtima said scholar transport falls under the mandate of the transport department, but the education department will establish “catch-up classes”.
Provincial transport spokesperson Unathi Binqose said the department is opposing the application for a “structural interdict, which requires the court to supervise the department on the provision of scholar transport”.
He said the departments are undertaking a verification exercise to determine whether the schools cited qualify.
Regarding the 50,000 figure cited, he said, “We are not sure how they reached this number, but it is certainly not what we have on our database.”
Binqose said a lack of funds was the main obstacle and Treasury was asked for more funding.
According to the LRC, the Human Rights Commission has applied to join the case. A court date is yet to be set.