Johannesburg - With his bottom firmly sitting on the legless chair, and leaning forward, the schoolboy knuckled down to some classroom task on a rickety desk, where another boy sat with his back arched.
A schoolgirl sat precariously on a bucket while another boy knelt on the floor.
This is the situation at Tsakani Primary School in Kagiso on the West Rand, where the majority of pupils do not have have adequate chairs, desks and other learning materials.
The lack of basic infrastructure and vital learning equipment is just one of the things the schoolchildren have to contend with, despite the country’s transition to democracy over the past 21 years.
While the Department of Education said on Monday it was made aware of the situation recently and would remedy it, a teacher at the school blamed the children for breaking the furniture.
She said many of them are from informal settlements and not familiar with “nice furniture”.
The dire situation at the school was revealed during an unannounced visit to some West Rand schools by the DA Gauteng education spokesman, Khume Ramulifho.
A short distance away at the Itireleng School for the Severely Mentally Handicapped, more infrastructure shortages were discovered. Garages, back rooms and storage rooms were transformed into classrooms for many subjects, including speech therapy, home economics, woodwork and cosmetology.
”These environments are not conducive to quality learning and teaching and this is not the education that our children deserve,” Ramulifho said.
Spokeswoman for the Gauteng Department of Education Phumla Sekhonyane said on Monday that the department had been recently made aware of the situation at Tsakani Primary School.
“It is completely unacceptable that pupils should lack the basics for a conducive learning environment,” she said.
During the visit, one pupil fell while seated on a chair balancing on three legs.
Makeshift desks were made with wood strategically placed together in many of the classrooms, where there was an average of 40 children. Some of the pupils shared a desk with their teachers.
Despite the difficult learning conditions, the youngsters lit up the classroom with their enthusiasm as they participated in the classroom activities.
Teacher Ina Vogel said the pupils were to blame for depleted resources at the school.
“The children dismantle the furniture and transform them into toys that they use on the playground,” Vogel said, adding that many of the pupils lived in shacks and were “not familiar with furniture”.
The school was in urgent need of playground equipment, as it would keep the pupils busy and prevent them from disassembling the classroom furniture, she said.
At Itireleng School for the Severely Mentally Handicapped, many pupils were squeezed into one classroom.
The shortage of classrooms were to blame for this, the school’s principal Olga Molefe said.
“There needs to be about 15 pupils per teacher so that these children can get hands-on attention, but now we have about 27 pupils in a class,” she pointed out.
The school also lacks basic services such as water and electricity. Molefe said an entire block of classrooms have been without electricity since the school opened in January.
Taps in the boys’ toilets were also faulty, while about 80 girl pupils had to share just three toilets among them, as the others were broken.
Molefe said the school urgently needed more classrooms so that they could adequately cater to children that were mentally impaired.
Sekonyane said 120 chairs had been ordered for higher primary, and 165 chairs were ordered for lower primary schools.
She added that 80 desks had been ordered for higher primary and 80 for lower primary.
“The department will expedite the process of furniture delivery to this school,” Sekonyane said.
A Schools Social Audit report by Equal Education, an education rights activist group, released last month found a sanitation crisis, overcrowding, and a shortage of desks and chairs in many schools. – Additional reporting by Vuyo Mkize
The Star