Berlin school closes in direct defiance of provincial directive

A MONTH after the province’s head of education lashed out at illegal school closures, Nowawe High School in Berlin has flouted his directive.

No teaching has taken place there since Monday.

In a memorandum last month, superintendent-general Mthunywa Ngonzo said the department had seen the problem escalating with schools using closures as a quick fix to deal with teacher shortages.

Ngonzo said the closures were unconstitutional as they denied the pupils their basic right to education and the teachers their right to work.

While no legal action had been taken against these schools, Ngonzo said the department had noted them and the communities involved .

“These communities that close schools are not part of any legislative power or authority to take such actions and they must realise this,” Ngonzo said yesterday in response to the recent school closure.

Nowawe school governing body chairman Mlulami Nziweni said the decision to close had come after a long struggle with teacher shortages in the critical subjects of maths and science.

According to Nziweni, the Section 21 school had not received funding from the department for years and this year battled with only 30% of its required textbooks.

“And when you phone the department all that happens is that you get transferred from pillar to post and from post to pillar ,” Nziweni said.

Earlier this year the Dispatch reported that six schools had shut their doors indefinitely over teacher shortages, affecting thousands of pupils.

Ngonzo said the department was dealing with the recent closure and was engaged yesterday in allocating teachers to fill vacancies.

“We are in a workshop right now where we are allocating teachers to schools so it’s possible that this school will have the teachers they need by the end of today so they will have no reason to stay closed,” Ngonzo said. —