Damning report card on schools

A month-long investigation by Equal Education into the state of 60 schools across the Eastern Cape has revealed that more than a quarter of the facilities were not fit for education purposes.

In a summarised report on the findings dubbed “Planning to Fail”, the education lobby group found 17 of the 60 schools visited were “entirely or substantially inappropriate” for education purposes.9

The schools – which are not all mentioned by name in the summary – have either no access to water, electricity or sanitation. Thirteen were built entirely from mud with accompanying zinc shacks.

Of further concern, is that almost half of the 17 do not appear on any infrastructure upgrade list.

The group also found that:

• 46 of the 60 schools had at least one “inappropriate” structure;
• Only 15% of the 60 schools had flush toilets;
• 44 of the 60 reported that they only had access to water “some of the time”; and
• Four of the 60 had no electricity connection at all.

At Mjanyelwa Junior Secondary School in Kayamnandi near Mbizana, pupils as young as five were seen playing in and around collapsed mud classrooms.

The lobby group said there was one brick structure, but the school was largely made of mud. Two of its classroom blocks had collapsed.

Despite the obvious dangers this posed both to pupils and staff, the head of Equal Education in the Eastern Cape Luzuko Sidimba said Mjanyelwa was not on any list for upgrading.

Speaking to the Daily Dispatch yesterday, Sidimba said the investigation had been conducted last year in the lead-up to the first norms and standards deadline which was November 29 2016.

In November 2013, the Department of Basic Education published legally binding norms and standards for school infrastructure.

The department gave itself three years to ensure all schools had access to water, electricity, working toilets and safe classrooms with a maximum of 40 pupils.

Sidimba said the reason for the EE investigation was to establish whether government would meet the deadline come November 29.

“We wanted to understand how such a breach would affect individual schools, teachers and pupils, but also the depth of the failure whether it pointed to isolated or systemic failure by government.”

The schools visited were in seven districts – Butterworth, King William’s Town, East London, Libode, Mbizana, KwaBhaca (Mount Frere) and Mthatha.

Department of Education spokesman Malibongwe Mtima yesterday said the department was unable to comment on the report as they still needed time to study it. — arethal@dispatch.co.za