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The department of Education needs to step up maintenance, repairs and
upgrades to the physical school infrastructure in the province.
Postmasburg Primary School is one example of a problematic whole. The
provision of classrooms, libraries, science and computer labs,
ablution, water and electricity is lagging far behind the national
standards.

The department with the largest slice of the provincial pie cannot say
there’s no funds. The truth is that there seems to be no political
will to improve school infrastructure. At the Warrenton High School,
for example, the school had to go through their insurance company to
get a leaking roof fixed. The department had promised repeatedly to
fix the roof, but never made good on these promises. It fell to the
school administration to resolve the issue, otherwise the roof would
have caved in on the children’s heads.

According to the latest National Education Infrastructure Management
System Report, the Northern Cape currently has 65 schools that rely on
pit toilets. That is 12% of the public ordinary schools in the
province. Yet, in the 2013/14 financial year, the department only
completed six ablution blocks. At this rate, the department will only
eradicate the sanitation backlog in eleven years. A child who started
grade 1 at a school with a pit toilet is likely to still be using a
pit toilet in his or her final year of schooling.

The project management of infrastructure projects by the department
leaves much to be desired. Work on one of the ablution blocks that had
been completed in the 2013/14 year had already started in 2011. The
department indicated in its 2013/14 annual report that it has ongoing
construction on 26 ablution blocks. Eleven of these projects was
originally intended to be completed in 2012. Why do projects run on
for years after it was supposed to be completed?

Schools without pit toilets are not necessarily providing adequate
infrastructure. In the Northern Cape, there are 30 schools using
Enviro-Loos, 88 using VIPs and 86 using flush toilets connected to a
septic tank. Boresetse High School in Mataleng, Barkley-West makes use
of such a toilet. There is a block in the drainage and the septic tank
is overflowing. These conditions are not conducive to quality
learning.

The National Education Infrastructure Management System Report also
shows that 53 schools in the Northern Cape have an unreliable water
supply and 21 schools have an unreliable electricity supply. How can
one expect children to learn in dark classrooms? How can children go
for a day without drinking water, water to wash their hands or water
to flush toilets?

A shocking 447 schools in the Northern Cape have no science
laboratories. How does the department expect the pass rate in Physical
Science to improve if learners do not have access to science
laboratories?

We call on the department of Education to begin delivering safe,
reliable infrastructure to schools. Without it, schools cannot
function and learning cannot take place.

Issued by DA