It took the provincial intervention from the North West Education and Sport Development MEC, Maphefo Matsemela and Superintendent General, Dr Itumeleng Molale at the Lerona Secondary School in Christiana Township and Thuto Lore in Bloemhof for learners to agree to suspend the class disruption and go back to school today, Friday 21 August 2015.
This follows after 3 days of class disruption by learners at Lerona Secondary School and Thuto Lore Secondary School demanding that MEC Matsemela and Dr Molale should come down and address them before they could go back to their classes. Some of the demands from learners at Lerona were that, they did not want their current principal Mr TF Jantjies and that they want new text books. The learners at Thuto Lore Secondary marched to the police station complaining that, they want cases opened for burglary from their school to be resolved urgently and those teachers who bunk classes to be disciplined by the department.
The Thuto Lore Secodary School learners went out from their school and disrupted lessons at Gaopalelwe Primary School, Thamagane Primary School and further went to Vaaloewer Primary School were they broke the gate of the school. In both towns the learners wanted Congress of the South African Students (COSAS) organisation to be given the equal recognition with the Representative Council of Learners (RCL) in all their schools.
MEC, Matsemela and Dr Molale put everything aside and called meetings with the Principal, COSAS representatives, RCL representative, Young Communist League representatives, School Governing Bodies members and school senior managers from both schools respectively to jointly come up with a peaceful resolution to the debacle.
MEC Matsemela stated that the department of education puts the interests of every learner at its heart, so they will do everything in their ability to ensure that those interests are protected at all the times.
“We must at all times respect the rule of law; we cannot dismiss or expel the principal if he has not transgressed any policy of the department. Teachers need to honour their contract of teaching at all times; we are not going to allow those teachers who bunk classes to continue to do that. We will task our departmental teams to investigate all the allegations highlighted by the learners in order to get to the bottom of the problem in both schools while teaching and learning is continuing unhindered”, said MEC Matsemela.
MEC Matsemela concluded the meeting by assuring the learners and the school management that the Lerona Secondary School with the shortage of teachers will be provided in the coming week. She strongly discouraged the disruption of classes and the destruction of school properties. MEC Matsemela further pleaded with learners to honour they their non negotiable responsibilities of attending classes at all the times without ceasing so that they can be the pride of the nation in future.
The department has submitted the order for the new text books.
Enquiries:
Elias Malindi
Cell: 072 115 4855/ 072 892 8399
