Cape Town - Waking up every morning and watching her peers rush off to school has started to take its toll on a 15-year-old Khayelitsha girl.
Nomvuyo Kema is one of the thousands who are yet to be placed in a school after her online applications were either not found or “simply ignored”.
She lives with her domestic worker mother and two younger siblings; one is in Grade 4 and the other in crèche. Instead of focusing on her studies, Nomvuyo has to walk her little sister to a nearby crèche and return home to do chores daily.
“I just want to be in school like my friends. But I don’t know when that will happen.”
A steady influx of families to the Western Cape has seen a rise in the number of hopeful pupils.
The greatest increase in enrolment is in the Metro-North and Metro East districts.
This week, MEC for Education Debbie Schäfer announced that she has received the results of a WCED survey which showed that the total enrolment for 2020 is 1 077 927 - which constitutes an increase of 16 848 over last year.
The survey is completed by schools and districts annually on the 10th day of the school year to assist the department with the allocation of further resources for the year.
“A further 6 027 learners are reported as being unplaced as at 30 January, 2020. This number is changing constantly. We are placing learners every day, but we are also receiving new late applications.”
The growing number of pupils in the metro points to a need for more schools to be built.
Schäfer said more than 130 000 pupils had moved to the Western Cape from other provinces in the past five years, mainly from the Eastern Cape, placing the education system in the Western Cape under considerable pressure.
The Western Cape ANC has urged that “the almost 6 000 learners that are still not in Western Cape schools must be placed in former Model C schools”.
“Space should be allocated for disadvantaged learners that are falling behind because they are not in school at all,” said ANC spokesperson on education Khalid Sayed.
The EFF’s provincial chairperson, Melikhaya Xego, called the lack of placement shameful, blaming the unavailability of classrooms on school closures across the metro.
“The minister of education in the Western Cape has now shamefully shifted her focus and is pointing fingers at the learners who she claims come from the Eastern Cape to flood schools in the Western Cape. She refuses to take ownership of the ill-preparedness of her department and government, their senseless closure of much-needed schools over the years, and is characterizing the problem as a migration problem.”
@WeekendArgus