Learners are sharing this open space to play netball and football. Picture Cindy Waxa/ANA
Johannesburg - Despite the government’s focus on fixing Eskom, Equal Education has called on Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana and National Treasury to recognise and end the education blackout in schools.
Godongwana will table the Budget in Cape Town on Wednesday.
Equal Education described overcrowding of schools, insufficient teachers and learning resources, and deteriorating infrastructure as an education blackout, and said the crisis posed a threat to the futures of learners.
“Every day, many learners across the country face serious difficulties and indignities at school, making it almost impossible (for them) to enjoy their constitutional right to a basic education,” it said.
The organisation said that, according to publicly available national figures, most of the country’s 23 276 public schools were still without libraries (17 832), lack reliable electricity (3 343) and water (5 836) supplies, and have dangerous pit-latrine toilets (2 130) as their only form of sanitation.
“This is the daily reality of many learners from working-class and rural communities as education departments continuously fail to deliver even the most basic infrastructure and resources.
“The physical state of our schools is a clear indication that the system is not functioning as it should. Given these appalling conditions, it is no surprise that many learners struggle with foundational skills such as reading,” it said.
According to Equal Education, the Department of Basic Education should obtain adequate funding to provide schools with the resources they need to make learning possible.
It said the sector had been facing a resource, infrastructure, and learning crisis, and had been experiencing its own load shedding long before Eskom started its blackouts.
It claimed that basic education funding had not kept up with inflation, growing learner enrolments and, more recently, the devastating impact of the Covid-19 pandemic.
“Looking at the projections made for the Budget this year, things are set to get worse, with basic education funding shrinking by 1.7% once inflation is taken into account,” Equal Education said.
However, it said there had been glimmers of light in the wake of its campaign highlighting the disastrous effects of school overcrowding on teaching and learning.
Following its campaign launch, Education Minister Angie Motshekga announced she was working with the National Treasury to provide targeted funding for overcrowded schools through the special intervention programme on overcrowding in schools.
Equal Education further called on the National Treasury to end austerity budgeting, ensure funding for the sector was in line with inflation, deal with corruption in the department, and see to it that the Public Procurement Bill was passed into law urgently.
kamogelo.moichela@inl.co.za
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