Make use of the platoon school system
A FEW weeks ago, I saw Gauteng MEC for education Panyaza Lesufi being interviewed by a journalist on television regarding the shortage of schools in Gauteng. It was not so much an interview as a pursuit by the journalist to elicit a coherent response from the harassed MEC.
I pity Lesufi, who has to answer about what he is doing about building more schools in the province. In our bankrupted economy, we cannot afford to build more schools even if the school-going population in Gauteng increases exponentially each year.
The answer to our schools crisis is simple, or should be simple: introduce the platoon system in our primary schools. The Merriam-Webster definition of a platoon school is “a departmentalised school in which the pupils of each grade are organised into platoons that take turns in using the classroom, shops, auditorium, gymnasium and other physical resources of the school plant”.
In simple terms, it means morning classes and afternoon classes.
When I began my teaching career at a small rural school in the old province of Natal in 1969, I taught a combined class of Grade 1 and Grade 2 in the afternoon. My lessons began at around 10 in the morning when my charges and I would sit on benches in the school veranda where we would complete our oral lessons. When the morning classes were dismissed at around midday, we would enter a classroom and complete the rest of the school day.
It was not a perfect system, but it obviated crowded classrooms. It was not convenient for either my pupils or myself and sacrifices had to be made. There was no deputy or vice-principal, so the principal had to remain on duty until my class was dismissed at 4pm.
Many years later, when I was a lecturer at a teachers’ training college in Durban, I met one of my Grade 1 pupils in my lecture room. He told me about a few other successful classmates, who despite their extreme poverty, went on to join various noble professions, including medicine.
On my transfer to my home town in Durban in 1971, I was once again a part of the platoon system, but this time, on a much larger scale. Owing to the bigger school population in the city, an entire school block of Grades 1 to 4 held afternoon classes. And, because it was a large school, we had a deputy-principal who would arrive late and take charge of the afternoon session.
The biggest impediment to the implementation of a platoon system in Gauteng would be the teachers themselves and their fractious teacher unions. I worked as a school inspector in Soweto in the mid-1990s, and I have first-hand experience of some teachers and principals leaving school at eleven in the morning or refusing to attend workshops in the afternoon. One of my senior black colleagues in the inspectorate told me that these teachers pursued other jobs in the afternoon, like driving taxis. For the sake of our beloved country, I hope their attitude has changed.