95% of schools pass the test
AFTER weeks of frantic preparations, 23 100 schools across the country will reopen tomorrow for thousands of Grade 7 and Grade 12 learners.
Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga, in a media briefing yesterday, said the issue of the few schools that are not yet ready will be resolved.
According to Motshekga, about 95% of the country’s schools have already been provided with Covid-19 related essentials.
She attributed the week-long delay to several factors, which she said included the fact that 1 672 schools were vandalised during the lockdown and that major work had to be done before opening them.
“As I have said earlier, equipment was being blocked on its way to schools by people you really wanted to have an opportunity to provide services to the department and that interferes greatly with the readiness of other provinces.
“Some of the problems that also delayed us were issues of vandalism, and I hope when MECs speak about the state of readiness they will indicate how schools have been vandalised, and even during the course of this week we had a quite number of schools which were broken into… up to now, we have 1 672 schools which have been vandalised,” she said.
Motshekga said the sector, with the assistance of its partners, will now strive to deal with the remaining 5% of the schools that are not ready to ensure that the unfettered rights to health, safety and basic education for all learners are protected.
“The golden rule is, there will be no school that will resume if not ready to do so,” she said.
However, it appears that the plan to accommodate the learners from schools that are not ready will depend on whether it succeeds after consultations with parents.
“For the remaining 5% or so learners, alternative measures have been developed by different districts such as temporarily using neighbouring schools, using underutilised spaces in boarding schools and putting other learners in camps.
“Because some of the alternatives need consultations, provinces will be engaging parents and following the appropriate protocols to get parental concessions. All of this we agreed should be finalised during the course of the week and recovery programmes be implemented,” Motshekga said.
But the country’s five teacher unions – Sadtu, Naptosa, SAOU, Natu and PEU, together with the school governing bodies – expressed concerns about the readiness of the three provinces.
KwaZulu-Natal, Limpopo and Eastern
Cape were still behind in terms of preparations to meet all the Covid-19 health and safety regulations.
“It should be stated that three out of the nine provinces were still experiencing challenges with regard to the delivery of water tanks, which will make the resumption of learning and teaching impossible unless alternative measures are taken to ensure that all learners receive education,” the unions said.
The bickering over readiness did not end there as Sadtu in KZN accused Premier Sihle Zikalala and his Education MEC Kwazi Mshengu of giving out false information on the province’s true state of readiness.
Speaking to the media in Durban yesterday, Zikalala and Mshengu said only 104 schools were not ready to reopen. However, the union said the exact figure was 390.
“As we release this list of 390 schools we are aware that the department may have a different list with a lesser number. This may be caused by the reason that the committees established at district and circuit levels were never serious about their work in other parts of the province to the extent of sampling schools instead of visiting all schools in circuits,” the union claimed.
Despite these claims by the union, Zikalala said 6 044 schools would be rolling out lessons to learners today. “Out of 6 148 schools, it is pleasing to report that over 6 044 schools are now ready to reopen because all the non-negotiables have been met. A total of 104 schools are not yet ready and will, therefore, have a delayed opening,” he said.