219 East Cape schools have just one teacher

More than 2 000 schools in the Eastern Cape have just two or three teachers, Education MEC Mandla Makupula admitted this week.

And, speaking at the Education Sector Lekgotla in Johannesburg, he said 219 schools in the province were led by a single teacher.

“We cannot hope to have quality education when there are schools run by a single teacher,” he said.

“Education gets compromised and it has an impact on the outcomes down the value chain.

“In fact, by the end of 2016 we had 219 one-teacher schools and that’s a crisis.”

Times Media recently visited two schools in Mdantsane in East London which are earmarked to be closed.

Pilani Primary School in Mdantsane NU7 only has two teachers and when the team visited last week, the children were playing outside as there were no teachers around.

It transpired that the teachers were instructed not to report for duty as the school was supposed to have been closed down due to low pupil numbers.

Parents at Khanyile Primary in Mooiplaas claimed their children had been abandoned by the state.

Khanyile Primary SGB chairwoman Nosithile Gobe said yesterday the Department of Education had never prioritised its core business, which was making sure classrooms were open and had a teacher.

The pass rate of the Eastern Cape, which continues to stay at the bottom of the pile, was 3.2 percentage points below that of nextlowest Limpopo.

“We are working hard to close down those schools that are non-functional and we call upon communities to work with us as that will benefit their children.

“We are closing some schools and [will] integrate some in order to fix the system,” Makupula said.