Cape Town - Angry parents in Dunoon plan to invade an unused temporary school where they want their 500 children educated after allegedly being turned away other schools.
The parents say they have had to rescue children as young as seven from paedophiles and substance abuse because they have been left to roam the streets after not being able to secure spots in nearby schools.
They say they have been liaising with the provincial Department of Basic Education to have their children aged 7 to 14 enrolled in schools since the start of the year.
They have now written a letter to the department, informing them of their plans to invade an unoccupied temporary school in the hope that somebody in the department will respond to their plight. The parents also say the department should have enough educators to accommodate the 500 pupils on a 1:38 ratio.
Concerned parent Lungile Mdayi said they would “invade the school tomorrow”.
“We will simply divide the children as per age and class they are supposed to be in. All the department needs to do is to send teachers because we cannot have a situation where they do not attend school the whole of this year plus next,” said Mdayi.
Jessica Shelver, spokeswoman for the provincial education department, said they had received the parents’ letter last week. Shelver said the department condemned the parents’ planned invasion.
Shelver also said the temporary structure the parents intended to invade was on land owned by the City of Cape Town and was made available to the department on a temporary basis.
She said the land would be returned to the city while the mobile classrooms would be moved elsewhere.
Shelver said the department was not aware of 500 children who were out of school in Dunoon. She said all pupils who were reported as not being in schools had been placed.
“The district office was informed of six new pupils in the last two weeks that would need placement,” said Shelver.
Though some parents say they enrolled their children at Sophakama Primary School in Dunoon last July, they were told their children would be on the waiting list as the school was already full. Some of the parents said many of the children out of school moved from the Eastern Cape this year with the hope of getting a better education, but they failed to make the necessary arrangements to get their children enrolled.
“We do not know about anything that we had to do prior to bringing the children here. We thought we would just arrive at the schools with our children the day before schools open in January and they would be admitted,” said one parent.
The group of parents said they had been called to several meetings with department officials to discuss the issue of children not being able to register at schools, but said no resolution had been made.
The parents said two new schools had been built in the area.
These were not nearly enough to accommodate the number of children who were left roaming the streets and who were potential victims of rape and being recruited into gangs.
They claimed the land the unoccupied temporary school is on is said to be earmarked for a sports field which they do not need.
Another parent, Thunyelwa Joka, said they had a meeting with education officials to “keep the existing temporary school to accommodate the number of schoolchildren that are moving up and down the Dunoon area”.
Weekend Argus