‘We are sitting with a crisis’
A school accepted more than 300 children after it was promised more teachers and classrooms. The Education Department has unfortunately not delivered yet.
|||Cape Town - A Wallacedene school accepted more than 300 children after the department of education promised them more teachers and classrooms.
However as the first term comes to an end, the Western Cape Department of Education (WCED) has not employed extra teachers or built the classrooms at Enkululekweni Primary.
On Wednesday principal Nondlela Tomose and the School Governing Body treasurer Thelma Duda-Mtengwane said children are battling to learn in overcrowded classrooms, they have to take it in turns to sit on the floor, and teachers have taken on extra classes.
Tomose and Duda-Mtengwane said, at the beginning of the year, the WCED asked them to accommodate 310 pupils with a promise that the WCED would build mobile classrooms and employ extra teachers before the end of February. “We are at the end of the first term now and those promises have not been fulfilled,” said Tomose.
“We are sitting with a crisis now. Our teachers have had their workload increased. We had to convert our special educational needs class into a Grade 5 classroom and Technology class into a Grade 3 classroom. How can you have 46 pupils and more in one class instead of 38 or 40?” Tomose asked.
The school has dropped teaching Life Orientation and those teachers are teaching other subjects like maths and languages to the additional children. Grade 2 teacher Lindiswa Fex’s class is overcrowded and pupils take turns to sit on the floor. Fex says it is difficult to reach all of them.
“I have 49 children here, all demanding my attention. I have to repeat a lesson many times until I am certain that all have received it. This is extra work for me. I have never had such a crisis in my teaching career,” she said.
Grade 5 pupil, Rian Walapha, 12, said there were 46 children with no class teacher. When they are taught he said it was difficult to hear because of all the noise. “It is difficult to hear a word coming from the teacher’s mouth. It is always noisy here. I always lose concentration. You have to sit in front if you want to hear a lesson otherwise coming to class would be a waste. But we come everyday because we want to learn,” he said.
Duda-Mtengwane said: “We are sitting on empty promises now. None of those promises were fulfilled. Our concern is that the children’s results will be affected.”
After numerous calls from the Cape Times, the WCED had not responded at the time of going to press last night. Yesterday afternoon WCED spokesperson Jessica Shelver said in an email: “The Ministry has requested the relevant information from our District Officials. I will revert soonest.”
michael.nkalane@inl.co.za
@siyaks
Cape Times