Cape Town - 180903 - Learners are seen waiting next to a road for their transport to collect them. A Community meeting was held on Monday to discuss learner safety in the District 6 and Zonnebloem area. Thousands of children come to school in the area every day. Before the forced removals, most of the kids were from the immediate community, but today amore than 70 percent of learners commute from the townships and Cape Flats. This is a reality that presents a number of safety challenges for the commuting children, most notably taxis that are overcrowded and speeding, or that park a distance away from the schools, forcing the kids to walk the last stretch through an area where there are lots of muggings, and now recently also two kidnappings. Picture Henk Kruger/African News Agency(ANA)
AN unplaced learner crisis is looming in the Western Cape as the placement of over 3000 Grade 1 and 8 learners is still in progress.
The Western Cape Education Department (WCED) confirmed it had received over 27 000 Grade 1 applications and over 96 000 Grade 8 applications.
The department last year faced legal action initiated by Equal Education (EE) and the Equal Education Law Centre (EELC) over the placement of out-of-school learners in the Metro East Education District, several months into the year.
The WCED said in 2024 there were 1 468 schools and 1 206 070 learners enrolled, with 25 special needs schools having 20 213 learners enrolled. They said 2025 figures would be verified at a later date.
“Placement has been in progress for 3 698, or 3%, of Grade 1 and 8 learners. There is some movement in the system as schools finalise their promotion and progression lists which may provide additional spaces for learners still requiring placement. While we had placed 97% of all Grade 1 and 8 learners in the province by December 4, 2024, it is not yet clear how many additional extremely late applications we will receive, and in which areas these learners will reside. We are also verifying numbers of learners placed since then,” said WCED spokesperson, Bronagh Hammond.
According to Hammond, they would also review the numbers of learners at schools in the province after ten school days, to “allow the system to settle”.
“We are scheduled to complete 6 new schools and 180 additional classrooms at existing schools in time for the start of the school year in January 2025. We aim to complete a further 3 new schools and 85 additional classrooms at existing schools by the end of March 2025.”
Leader of the ANC in the Provincial Legislature, Khalid Sayed said the crisis of unplaced learners in the Western Cape for the 2025 academic year highlighted a “broader educational malaise”.
“Every year without fail thousands of learners miss out on the first few weeks and months of education, including those who remain unplaced for the entire year. The DA government’s failure to address the shortage of schools and overcrowded classrooms exacerbates this issue, particularly as they cut over 2 400 teaching posts, leading to increased class sizes and fewer available spaces.
“National government has made available additional resources to address the crisis but the DA deliberately misused them on temporary solutions like the rapid school build programme. There are enough resources to address the crisis but the DA is not interested on finding lasting solutions to the issue,” said Sayed.
Parents for Equal Education SA (PEESA) spokesperson Vanessa Le Roux said it would be “chaos” from next week when schools reopen on January 15.
“We’ve lost 2400 teachers in addition to the annual unplaced learner crisis so it's going to be total chaos. We will see on the day, the district offices will be filled with long lines.”
Le Roux said one of the contributing factors to the problem was because new schools were not being built.
“They don't build schools. Every year they say they do but the question is where? They even say this is how many classrooms they've built but if you get there now you see the first batch of classrooms is only coming in March, so what will be happening from January to March? Children will be at home and at risk of falling prey to social ills. They now build squatter schools. They are forcing already overcrowded schools to put up mobile classrooms, that's schools with already 40 to 50 children in one class. We see teachers that will tell you at foundation phase they have 60 children in their class. The crisis has already started,” said Le Roux.
Cape Times
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