On 15 January 2019, the Provincial Legislature embarked on a comprehensive Schools Opening Functionality and Monitoring Programme throughout the Province. MEC for Human Settlements and Public Works, Honourable Ravigasen Pillay, in his capacity as the champion for the Harry Gwala District Municipality accompanied by other members of the Provincial Legislature went on a three day visit to physically observe, evaluate and assess the state of readiness in different schools as the 2019 academic year unfolds.
The delegation visited eight schools and the first stop was at Leshman Secondary School, which is located in Masameni location on the outskirts of Creighton Village. Most of the schools visited are situated in a deep rural area where there is a high rate of illiteracy and poverty levels. The school’s pass rate has declined drastically over the years with the matric pass rate failing to reach above 30%. MEC Pillay urged the community leaders and the School Governing Bodies (SGB) to work in partnerships with the Department of Education in the fight against the social ills that contribute towards the poor results. “We need to add passion, determination and patriotism in whatever we do,” said Mr Pillay. “The country as a whole, there was a significance increase in the matric pass rate and that is mainly because of the concerted effort. What is urgently required in this situation in this situation is a speedy implementation of consequence management for poor performance,” emphasised MEC Pillay. He further went on to congratulate and thank those teachers who have performed exceptionally well by achieving 80%-100% pass rate in their allocated subjects.
The following schools were visited for the remainder of the three days, namely Mnqundekweni Primary and Pholela High Schools in Bulwer respectively; Impunga Secondary and Ukuthula Secondary Schools in Jolivet respectively; with the last three - Malezulu Primary School, Daniel Mzamo Special School and Mbalenhle Primary School located in Highflats. The positive was that a majority of the schools began ‘teaching and learning’ from day one with vigour and inspiration. More than 95% of the schools visited had 100% of core stationery, textbooks and tutorial material delivered. The majority of educators also reported fully to their respective schools on the first day with isolated cases of absenteeism reported. The majority of the schools visited, had provisional attendance registers. An identified and significant case was a report on a number of schools with quite a large numbers of orphans on the database.
A debriefing session was conducted on the final day of the visit, held at the Little Flower School in Ixopo where after concrete and informed deliberations took place on what measures would be put in place in order to improve the learning and infrastructural conditions in all schools visited which will in turn yield better results.
