Education stakeholders are apprehensive about the opening of schools. School governing bodies and teacher unions say that some schools don’t have water and ablution facilities while others lack the infrastructure to ensure social distancing. It appears that some schools are yet to receive PPE ahead of its opening on Monday.
KwaZulu-Natal, Eastern Cape and Limpopo are top of the list for teacher’s union Natu.
The union’s General Secretary, Cynthia Barnes, says many rural and township schools in these provinces do not have water and sanitation, no PPE and many of the schools have been vandalised.
Barnes is also concerned that the department’s approach to teachers with comorbidities didn’t work and left hundreds of learners, including Grade 12, without teachers last year.
She says school principals and managers had to travel long distances to give and collect work from home-based teachers.
Natu says schools are now opting to isolate those teachers at school and have Education Assistants to act as intermediaries between them and learners.
“You find that most of SMT members don’t have cars they use common transport and now how are the learners going to be taught effectively, that is why they are opting for those teachers to come to school and they are going to be given a separate room where they are going to stay, and teach from those separate rooms using EA’s to help in the classroom.”
Barnes says that mobile toilets in KwaZulu-Natal schools were taken back after the department failed to pay for them, adding that some schools are still waiting for water tanks, mobile classrooms and PPE.
Water, sanitation a big problem
Naptosa’s Basil Manuel says in their last survey, some schools didn’t have PPE and they’re concerned that it won’t reach them in time. He says water and sanitation is a big problem.
“Naptosa is not satisfied with the level of water and sanitation, there are still schools that don’t have a regular feed of water, we know that we are in a better position than we were before but water tanks are a temporary solution, we must move to more permanent solutions, and when you consider provinces like the North West, returning infrastructure money and they have water tanks in schools it shows there is very little planning and forward-thinking.”
Vandalism
Vandalism has also become a problem, mainly in Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal. Natu says that vandals don’t only steal computers but also destroy books.
Chairperson of Parents in School Governance, Mahlomola Kekana, says more should be done to secure schools.
“Burglaries continue to happen it continues to expose the department of education in terms of its ability to secure schools however there is quite a number of schools that are getting support in terms of their initiatives with community policing we want to encourage communities to use CPF’s and other forms of community support to protect our schools.”
But it’s not all doom and gloom. Many school governing bodies say their schools are ready. The Gauteng Education Department is expected to update on school readiness on Friday and the national Minister of Basic Education will address the media on Sunday.
The government is expected to clarify its stance on whether sick teachers can continue to work from home and whether the class rotation system introduced last year will stay put.
