Minister of Basic Education, Mrs Angie Motshekga provides feedback to Port Elizabeth northern areas communities as part of continued stakeholder engagements
The Minister of Basic Education, Mrs Angie Motshekga returned to Port Elizabeth following her visit to the Nelson Mandela Metro (Port Elizabeth and Uitenhage Education Districts) in the Eastern Cape on 14 March 2016.
The Minister’s visit was part of her regular oversight visit to Provincial Education Departmentsand in particular sought to address issues and concerns arising from the Northern Areas, especially school disruptions that have headlined various challenges experienced by the school communities since the onset of the 2016 academic year.
The Minister, on that occasion listened to concerns raised by community stakeholders, principals and School Governing Body members and committed to report-back on the challenges raised.
In the main, the challenges identified included over-crowding, teacher shortages, LTSM deliveries and quality issues as well as infrastructure challenges among others.
Today the Minister held two meetings, one with principals in the morning and community stakeholders in the afternoon. She gave a detailed report-back on how the Department plans to deal with the challenges raised and also reported on work that has already begun in dealing with some of the short-term issues raised. The Minister committed that the DBE will work closely with the Eastern Cape Provincial Education Department to ensure they are supported adequately to deal with the challenges.
It must be noted with a degree of disappointment that certain community stakeholders did not wish to participate in the report back session but rather chose to politicize the situation and use it as an opportunity to protest instead of contributing to the solutions by once again disrupting schooling in order to hand over a memorandum unnecessarily. We are of the view that these stakeholders do not have the interests of education at heart but are more interested in scoring cheap political points at the expense of learners and should not be taken seriously.
We appreciate those who are willing to work with us in improving education systematically in this area with the best interest of learners at heart and as the Department we have undertaken to give principals on going reports on how we are proceeding in dealing with their challenges.
Enquiries:
Elijah Mhlanga
Cell: 083 580 8275
Troy Martens
Cell: 079 899 3070
