Sunday Times E-Edition

Education works when we all pull together

McCauley is the president of Rhema Family Churches and chair of the National Religious Leaders Council

The 2022 academic year has started in earnest and basic education minister Angie Motshekga has emphasised how a collective effort can help reboot the system. “Covid has had a devastating impact on the basic education sector in the last two years,” she told a media briefing.

“From the loss of teaching and learning time, to education personnel losing their lives to Covid complications. We have sought to find every strategy to keep the sector going, even under such difficult conditions. Working together with our stakeholders we have been able to return all learners back to school at primary level.”

I couldn’t agree more — nothing beats working together. Nothing beats unity of purpose in the midst of diversity. While I understand that different stakeholders have different interests in the education sector, nothing should be above the interests of our children getting a proper education.

We commend the minister and her team, as well as the provincial premiers and their teams, for doing a remarkable job of getting the schools ready to reopen. We are living in challenging and difficult times because of the pandemic.

The reopening of schools was not without its challenges and difficulties. It was a massive undertaking by the department in getting all the schools to be Covid-compliant.

We also commend other stakeholders like the teachers’ unions and civil society that were out there to assist the department, giving constructive criticism where necessary, yet making sure the schools were ready to reopen safely.

One of the biggest challenges that seems to haunt our education system is that of unplaced learners in the new academic year.

This is sometimes caused by late applications, despite marketing and advertising of application cut-off dates by the national department and provinces.

Year in and year out, the department has to deal with parents either ignoring or not being aware of the published closing dates. Also, there are many parents who live in informal settlements and are not part of mainstream media campaigns and don’t register but show up on opening day.

When listening to Motshekga, you have a sense that the national department and the provinces are doing their best to accommodate all learners, but the problem of unplaced learners persists.

I think this problem is bigger than the national department and provinces. This, in my book, is a national government problem. This is the problem of urbanisation — people are moving from the rural provinces to cities every year in search of a better life. To expect the basic education department to deal with this problem is a far-fetched dream and, unless we deal with the infrastructure problem as a whole, there is no way we will be able to solve it.

Provinces like Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal need more schools to be built every year to cope with the influx of children relocating to these provinces. We call on the government to rethink their budget allocation, particularly in education. The budget can’t be just operational, it must include infrastructure projects such as building new schools and renovating others. I believe that if we approach this challenge as a national crisis with all the stakeholders on board, we can overcome it.

While we are all happy to see the start of the 2022 school calendar there is the issue of independent schools that must be addressed in the long term. To have some children start their calendar year on time and others not able to because of a lack of resources is a sorry state of affairs. We cannot celebrate this divide between the haves and the have-nots; it’s not sustainable. Our government must improve the capacity of our schools. We have ignored this problem for too long now and it is coming back to haunt us.

The independent schools cannot celebrate that they can continue with education while other children sit at home. We must all be ashamed of the status quo. The independent schools’ leadership must reach out to others, and the private sector must help improve our public schools’ capacity. What message are we sending to our children when one child can go to school and another one can’t afford to because of poor infrastructure and capacity?

The children are our future. They will be our leaders, workers, doctors, and professionals. They will create the technologies, lead the institutions, and occupy the seats of government. It is our duty to protect their lives and do our utmost to make sure they receive equal education and treatment.

Lastly, I’d like to congratulate the 2021 matric students for doing their best in last year’s exams. These learners wrote their exams under difficult conditions brought on by the pandemic. I cannot imagine what it must be like to prepare for your final exams while having to be careful to protect yourself from contracting Covid.

The matric pass rate rose in 2021 to 76.4%, marked by an increase in the numbers who wrote the exams, as well as the number of bachelor passes.

Now it is over to the higher education system, which must not fail these young people.

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2022-01-23T08:00:00.0000000Z

2022-01-23T08:00:00.0000000Z

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