Grade 12 exams got off to a rocky start on Tuesday at two Eastern Cape schools where exams were delayed at one of them and completely withdrawn at the other.
The English paper 1 exams at St Thomas school for the Deaf – situated between King William’s Town and Stutterheim – were delayed by an hour due to a protest by non-teaching staff.
Exams at Ndaliso Senior Secondary School in OR Tambo were withdrawn when more than 300 pupils enrolled in the department of basic education’s “second chance programme” refused to write the exams.
They demanded they be allowed to write all their exams in the current exam season instead of getting multiple exam opportunities.
Provincial education spokesperson Malibongwe Mtima said the department decided to withdraw the exams at Ndaliso. He said however, they were prepared to continue with Wednesday’s accounting paper. “Other than the two incidents, the first exam in the major subjects went well,” said Mtima.
At St Thomas about 30 staff affiliated to Nehawu – including hostel and kitchen staff, security guards and drivers – locked the school’s gates from 5am and barred anyone from entering in protest over unpaid overtime money. The 13 Grade 12 pupils who were supposed to have started writing at 9am only started writing after 10am.
According to housekeeping supervisor, Vusumzi Ndwayana, the support staff have not been paid for overtime worked, public holidays and Sunday shifts, since 2013.
“We have letters from the department promising to pay us overtime monies owed to us. Those letter dates back to 2013,” said Ndwayana.
As a result, since September 22, Ndwayana said they had decided to stop working overtime.
When the Dispatch arrived at the school around 9.30am, there were five police vehicles outside.
Teachers were sitting in the shade while officials from the department negotiated with the workers at the gate.
At around 9.45am a school official came to the gate and informed officials from the department of education that the pupils had still not started exams and were receiving counselling.
The department’s director of labour relations, Sihle Mnguni blamed the delay on “slow systems” and “administrative hiccups”.
At around 10.30am, the pupils were said to have started writing.
Nehawu’s regional secretary, Khonaye Gxaleka said the workers had agreed to return to work and gave the department until November 30 to pay out all outstanding overtime money and allowances. Gxalaka said the workers will not work weekends until the money was paid. This is the fourth special needs school in Buffalo City Metro where non-teaching staff went on a go-slow due to unpaid overtime monies. Earlier this year non-teaching staff at Vukuhambe in Mdantsane, Khayalethu in North End in East London and Parklands in Beacon Bay embarked on a go-slow for the same reason.
On Tuesday, Mnguni claimed the department had paid some of the overtime money owed to the staff at the three schools.
At the time of writing, the Dispatch could not confirm Mnguni’s claim...