Subsequent to cries for help by parents and communities of Uitenhage district, Eastern Cape provincial basic education Superintendent General Advocate Modidima Mannya immediately stopped his office schedule to visit three areas in Uitenhage last week, Thursday and Friday with an aim to gather background information as well as “assess the nature of the challenges” facing the areas.
What stood out amongst the communities of Jeffery’s Bay, Patensie and Hankey was an absence of a high school structure. This means that after completing Grade seven, learners from these areas have to walk to the nearest town to attend a high school education with a distance of 42 km to and back.
Following his assessment and meetings with all affected education stakeholders, Mannya believes that some of the already visited communities’ challenges emanate, amongst other things, from lack of adequate high schooling structures as well as necessary resources ranging from absence of a nearby high school and lack of consistent scholar transport system for the learners.
Close to five months, parents in parts of Jeffrey’s Bay and Uitenhage region had to raise funds for their children’s transportation to nearby towns to attend school, but Mannya has vowed to do all he can to make sure that there was an interim solution to the scholar transport problems to put a stop to children roaming about in streets.
In addition, he said that a plan was at hand for the building of a high school in Jeffrey’s Bay to start from October this year.
With temporary structures costing just over R250 000 for a single class, Mannya said, “The department will need to look at the practicality of the implication of children’s travelling (from one town to the next nearby) and if it’s feasible we will erect a temporary structure for the learners.”
Ncedile Meleni who is a parent and one of the local primary school’s School Governing Body (SGB) members, said the building of a high school within their community would “bring change to a lot of things.”
“In Jeffrey’s bay, literally all the schools only teach from Grade R to Grade seven, we have prefab classrooms that are over 20 years old and which are not ideal for learning and most sad is that we have no high school at all”, he said.
With children who are suppose to be either starting or completing high school compelled to walk long distance to nearby towns for classes, Meleni said it was no wonder that their community had a high drop-out rate.
“In a recent (learner attendance) survey, we learnt that from 100 children who start high school education in our district only 40% are able to make it through to Grade 12. The rest just stop going to school and not having a constant scholar transportation system makes the situation worse”- he said.
The intention of his visits to the aforementioned districts is to assess the nature of challenges found in all these areas. Thereafter, Advocate Mannya will work alongside with the MEC and the Premier to seek and decide on intervention measures to be put in place for the different challenges experienced in these areas.
Source: Eastern Cape Department of Education
