Five hundred schools across the Eastern Cape have closed, forcing pupils to seek placements away from home.
Fifty pupils in the Cathcart farming area have been left in the lurch by the education department, which failed to provide them with scholar transport.
Now the future of pupils from the Junction Farm and Happy Valley area hangs in the balance as their parents have no means to send them to the next-closest schools, which are about 45km away.
Parent Thembisa Ziwele, of Junction Farm, said their children had not started school this year and there had been no proper explanation as to why. All they know is that there was no scholar transport allocated to them.
In the Happy Valley area, farm worker Ronnie Gxwala said his family was forced to fork out money from meagre farm labour salaries to rent empty houses in Cathcart for their children to be able to go to school.
This is happening as the Eastern Cape education department implemented its schools’ rationalisation programme.
Many schools from across the province have been closed because of:
- Dwindling numbers of pupils;
- Multi-grade teaching because of a shortage of pupils;
- Accessibility to schools because of the poor state of roads; and
- Bad or inadequate school infrastructure.
Across the length and breadth of the province, in areas such as Peddie, King William’s Town and Chalumna, state-of-the-art schools built with millions of taxpayers’ rands have been closed.
Many, which were closed less than five years ago, are in a dilapidated state.
In Peddie’s Ndabazandile School, expensive stationery and typewriters lie abandoned and disused, and in Chalumna, a
multimillion-rand school opened in late 1994 – Luyolo Senior Secondary – is falling apart.
Eastern Cape education department spokesman Mali Mtima confirmed 508 schools were closed and many were merged with others.
He said the closed schools would not be left derelict but would continue being used by the department. “We cannot escape rationalisation, but the schools will be used as circuit offices to assist schools.
“We are expecting people like subject specialists to occupy these schools to help assist the department,” Mtima said.
He said textbooks and furniture were moved with the pupils. “What we understand is that in the 508 schools which were closed, textbooks and furniture will be or have been moved with the pupils to their new schools,” said Mtima.
He said the department was not going to allow schools with fewer pupils to operate while the merger was a way to give the province’s schoolchildren a better education.
High schools with less than 200 pupils and primary schools with fewer than 135 pupils were shut down or merged with others.
“This means pupils have to be moved and means are provided by government to transport these pupils to and from schools.”
But parents of pupils at Junction Farm school, which was closed in 2004, say there is no scholar transport for their children, who were forced to move 28km away to Forest Range farm.
Scholar transport was introduced a few years later but it stopped last month, leaving 50 school-going children idle at home. They are unable to travel the distance on foot.
“They closed a beautiful farm school here and moved our children to a school that is run from an old sheep-shearing shed at Forest Range. This year we were abruptly told that the scholar transport was not available at all,” Ziwele said.
When a Daily Dispatch team visited Junction Farm, children as young as five were playing in the grounds of their old farm school.
“The painful part is that they always ask us about when the transport is coming to fetch them. Even if we stay on farms, we are South Africans who deserve better,” a parent and resident of Junction Farm, Nosimphiwe Kaleni, said.
Daily Dispatch found the same situation in the Happy Valley area where a farm school was closed. Gxwala said their children, some as young as 14, had become farm labourers.
“Government should have provided boarding schools for the children of farm labourers, not this uncalculated decision that has pushed our children into working as labourers,” he said.
In Mdantsane and other communities, school governing body members are protesting, vowing their schools won’t be closed, saying they were never properly consulted.
Mtima said they were currently sending their officials to investigate what is happening in farming communities and in areas where scholar transport had stopped. — bonganif@dispatch.co.za
Rationalisation programme sees 500 schools close
Fifty pupils in the Cathcart farming area have been left in the lurch by the education department, which failed to provide them with scholar transport.
Now the future of pupils from the Junction Farm and Happy Valley area hangs in the balance as their parents have no means to send them to the next-closest schools, which are about 45km away.
Parent Thembisa Ziwele, of Junction Farm, said their children had not started school this year and there had been no proper explanation as to why. All they know is that there was no scholar transport allocated to them.
In the Happy Valley area, farm worker Ronnie Gxwala said his family was forced to fork out money from meagre farm labour salaries to rent empty houses in Cathcart for their children to be able to go to school.
This is happening as the Eastern Cape education department implemented its schools’ rationalisation programme.
Many schools from across the province have been closed because of:
Across the length and breadth of the province, in areas such as Peddie, King William’s Town and Chalumna, state-of-the-art schools built with millions of taxpayers’ rands have been closed.
Many, which were closed less than five years ago, are in a dilapidated state.
In Peddie’s Ndabazandile School, expensive stationery and typewriters lie abandoned and disused, and in Chalumna, a
multimillion-rand school opened in late 1994 – Luyolo Senior Secondary – is falling apart.
Eastern Cape education department spokesman Mali Mtima confirmed 508 schools were closed and many were merged with others.
He said the closed schools would not be left derelict but would continue being used by the department. “We cannot escape rationalisation, but the schools will be used as circuit offices to assist schools.
“We are expecting people like subject specialists to occupy these schools to help assist the department,” Mtima said.
He said textbooks and furniture were moved with the pupils. “What we understand is that in the 508 schools which were closed, textbooks and furniture will be or have been moved with the pupils to their new schools,” said Mtima.
He said the department was not going to allow schools with fewer pupils to operate while the merger was a way to give the province’s schoolchildren a better education.
High schools with less than 200 pupils and primary schools with fewer than 135 pupils were shut down or merged with others.
“This means pupils have to be moved and means are provided by government to transport these pupils to and from schools.”
But parents of pupils at Junction Farm school, which was closed in 2004, say there is no scholar transport for their children, who were forced to move 28km away to Forest Range farm.
Scholar transport was introduced a few years later but it stopped last month, leaving 50 school-going children idle at home. They are unable to travel the distance on foot.
“They closed a beautiful farm school here and moved our children to a school that is run from an old sheep-shearing shed at Forest Range. This year we were abruptly told that the scholar transport was not available at all,” Ziwele said.
When a Daily Dispatch team visited Junction Farm, children as young as five were playing in the grounds of their old farm school.
“The painful part is that they always ask us about when the transport is coming to fetch them. Even if we stay on farms, we are South Africans who deserve better,” a parent and resident of Junction Farm, Nosimphiwe Kaleni, said.
Daily Dispatch found the same situation in the Happy Valley area where a farm school was closed. Gxwala said their children, some as young as 14, had become farm labourers.
“Government should have provided boarding schools for the children of farm labourers, not this uncalculated decision that has pushed our children into working as labourers,” he said.
In Mdantsane and other communities, school governing body members are protesting, vowing their schools won’t be closed, saying they were never properly consulted.
Mtima said they were currently sending their officials to investigate what is happening in farming communities and in areas where scholar transport had stopped. — bonganif@dispatch.co.za
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