Francesca Villette
PARENTS afraid that their children might be without a school protested outside an unused temporary school in Dunoon yesterday, which they had invaded earlier this month.
Yesterday marked the start of the third academic term for about a million pupils in the province.
In Dunoon, about 100 pupils have still not been placed in formal schools according to residents, despite it being halfway through the academic year.
The land on which the temporary school is on was previously leased by the Western Cape Education Department (WCED) from the City to accommodate pupils while a new Sophakama Primary School was being built.
There are 35 mobile classrooms at the site.
When construction of the school was completed earlier this month, pupils moved and the mobile classrooms remained empty.
Earlier this month, parents of children aged between five and nine invaded the unused temporary school and demanded that their children be registered at schools in the area.
Education MEC Debbie Schäfer’s spokesperson Jessica Shelver said department officials addressed parents and their children yesterday.
“The team addressed the parents and their children, indicating that they were there to help them with schooling, and needed the names, ages and any other available information to register the children.”
Shelver said 75 pupils’ names were captured.
The WCED was also negotiating with the City for continued use of the land.
“The department will need this additional accommodation for 2016, given ongoing migration to the area,” Shelver said.
Sixty-six of the pupils were new to the WCED’s Central Education Management Information System (Cemis).
Shelver added it was not yet clear whether the pupils were from other provinces, or whether their parents failed to enrol their children timeously.
Equal Education Law Centre director Dmitri Hotlzman who is assisting the parents, was at the school yesterday.
He said the WCED needed to provide clarity on short and long-term plans for schools in the area.
Parent Angel Zethu said her two children, aged eight and six, had been placed on the waiting list for the last two years.
“We do not want to fight. We are talking about the future of our children, who are supposed to go to school,” she said.
The R40 million state-of-the-art Sophakama Primary School was opened last month.
It has 1 600 pupils and 32 classrooms.