UNPLACED LEARNERS A MAJOR WORRY
● Activists express doubts over readiness of public schools ● Concern over number of pupils who still haven’t secured a spot
EDUCATION activists say the Basic Education Department (BED) is not ready for the reopening of schools today because many learners have still not been placed.
Education activist Hendrick Makaneta said the placement of all learners is key if they were to talk about the state of readiness in the terrain of basic education.
“We have noted that there are many learners who are yet to be placed, particularly in Gauteng and the Western Cape. The problem is recurring every year, hence the department is called upon to review the current application system with a view to make improvements,” Makaneta said.
This comes after Minister Angie Motshekga held a media briefing on the state of readiness for the opening of schools for the 2022 academic year yesterday.
Motshekga said the department was aware that there were still learners who were yet to be placed in schools.
She said they would continue to work with provinces to ensure that they placed all unplaced learners as a matter of urgency.
“We, however, implore parents and guardians to accept the schools in which their learners are placed. When schools have reached their maximum capacities, further admissions become impossible,” Motshekga said.
Vanessa Le Roux, founder of a group called Parents for Equal Education SA, said: “At this point, I don’t know how to define readiness, as we are faced with so many learners that are not placed yet, readiness should be defined by when every learner is placed, we have become too comfortable with leaving too many learners from poor communities behind.”
Le Roux said they were inundated with calls from desperate parents trying to place their children, which makes her question the figures that the Western Cape Education Department (WCED) gave of unplaced learners on December 2; they said 29 500 learners in the province haven't been placed. They have allocated 45 additional mobile classrooms, which could never make a slight difference to that total.
Motshekga said that the department was ready for Free State, Gauteng, North West, Limpopo and Mpumalanga public schools to open their doors for education.
She said the department was able to place the majority of learners for enrolment, however, Gauteng, the Western Cape and urban areas in KwaZulu-Natal were still struggling with placements.
“The provinces have assured us that they are doing everything in their power and we are appealing to parents to allow provinces to clear off and settle those that have been admitted and those that have places. From there we will be able to identify any possible spaces to place other learners,” Motshekga said.
She added that it was the department’s responsibility to ensure that all learners had placements.
Western Cape Cosas’s secretary Mphumzi Giwu said it has always been the case that the WCED has never been ready in terms of the state of readiness in opening schools, as many learners have not been placed.
BED deputy director-general Simone Geyer said Gauteng had a high demand for placement because of a large influx of workers who come into the province with their children at the beginning of the year and the province also had a large population of foreign nationals’ children.
“We’ve got about 13 million learners in the country and currently, based on the provinces that still need to place, there are under 400 000 learners that have not been placed,” Geyer said.
Late registrations were the main reason why large provinces and urban areas struggled with placements. She added that when there was an influx of learners, one of the key problems was the availability of efficient furniture.
“We have already supplied school furniture where an influx happens, we then have to look at what the shortfall is and how best to address that,” she said.
BED director-general Mathanzima Mweli said that there was a projected 700 000 learners who had dropped out of the system because of the Covid-19 pandemic.
“From the Education Management Information System, which is the system the department used to collect data from each school, it indicates that learner enrolment has increased from 2020 which was 13.1 million to 13.4 million in 2021. This means that enrolment has increased by 300 000 learners in 2021,” Mweli added.
Meanwhile, the minister said schools will remain on the rotational timetable, where it is applicable.
“The fact of the matter is that Covid19 is still very much with us and we need to continue to work together to fight it. We are exploring possibilities for schools to return to normal, as the call has been made, but we have to comply with the protocols of Covid-19,” Motshekga said.
Geyer added that the Ministerial Advisory Committee did not allow the department to open up all the high schools full-time because there were larger numbers of learners within high schools and in many instances high schools cannot maintain the 1 to 1.5metre social distance in classrooms.
“The nature of what happens is that in some subjects you might have smaller numbers but when you come together as a big group like in the language subjects or maths, those numbers will not be able to accommodate physical distance,” she said.
Geyer added there were schools which were granted permission after the requirements were assessed.
The minister said the department would be working with School Governing Bodies, parents and the Department of Health to intensify the vaccination drive to get learners aged 12 to 17-yearsold vaccinated against Covid-19.
“Vaccination programmes are run by the Department of Health, not by us so if 12-year-olds present themselves at a health-care facility for vaccination, it is completely out of our control but our preference is that parents will work with us to motivate and support our learners and their children to vaccinate.”
Mgwaba also said during this time most pupils were not at their homes and out of their provinces visiting families and relatives, so they were getting results easily without travelling back home.
Graeme Wild, SA Pulp and Paper Industries Limited (Sappi) vice-president sales and marketing, said newspaper readership was declining around the world, with consumers turning to online news sources.
Wild said the newspaper industry was further affected by the Covid-19 pandemic, with an estimated drop in demand of about 20% in 2020.
Wild said that Sappi was currently the only remaining local producer of newsprint in South Africa. He added that with newsprint constituting less than 1% of its overall sales, “Sappi does not foresee that the decision to cease publication of the matric results having a significant impact on its bottom line”.
Cosas spokesperson Douglas
Ngobeni said the decision was welcome, but long overdue. He said many generations of Cosas leadership had championed the call to not publish the matric results.
In 2012, the department stopped publishing the matriculants’ names and only their examination numbers, but Ngobeni said this move served no purpose because there were still learners who would be depressed or suicidal if they didn’t pass well.
“Learners write their examinations on their own, so they should receive their results on their own. Learners should access their results first so that they can deal with them without anyone else,” he said.
Federation of School Governing Bodies chief executive Jaco Deacon said the move was “ludicrous”.
“I cannot understand how they used Popia to justify the decision as you cannot identify the learners because
the results are published with their examination numbers. In terms of the act, it’s already a form of de-identification which is then exempted from the provisions of the act.
“It’s a very strange decision,” Deacon said.
The SA Democratic Teachers’ Union said the announcement was a welcome relief that they had long been calling for.
Education activist Hendrick Makaneta said it was important to all South Africans, and the department, to comply with Popia as it pertained to learners’ private information.