Lisa Isaacs
THE newly built Eerste River primary school will remain vacant until the 2016 school year after attempts to relocate Scottsdene Secondary School pupils there were blocked by angry community members.
On Monday, the Western Cape Education Department abandoned plans to temporarily move Scottsdene pupils to the Eerste River facility after community members gathered at the school gates before their arrival in protest, forcing the department to cancel its planned relocation.
The Kraaifontein school was closed last month when engineers identified possible structural problems while inspecting the building, and the department promised pupils would be temporarily relocated while contractors installed mobile classrooms at Scottsdene.
MEC for Transport and Public Works Donald Grant said structural elements of both the double-storey and single-storey buildings, including the balcony, load-bearing walls and floor slabs, needed to be assessed against industry design standards.
Jessica Shelver, spokesperson for Education MEC Debbie Schäfer, said: “The new Eerste River school will now stand vacant until pupils take occupancy in the 2016 academic year.
“(Scottsdene) pupils have successfully been accommodated, and teaching and learning has resumed.
“The Grade 12 pupils were accommodated in the purpose-built prefabricated classrooms from the beginning of the third term so that teaching and learning ahead of the National Senior Certificate was not interrupted.”
She added that the department would implement a catch-up plan during the September holiday to make up for work lost since last month.
Public Works has also fast-tracked the installation of mobile classrooms, starting with 12 on the school’s parking lot this week, and contractors have started civil works on the school’s sports fields to accommodate 14 mobile classrooms.
Public Works officials expect that it will take about three weeks to install these 14 classrooms.
Interim School Governing Body member Vincent Marino argued that the governing body had only received an SMS from the education department yesterday morning, briefly stating that Scottsdene pupils would not be moved there.
“We’ve been waiting for a school for 25 years.
“The education department did not consult with us and didn’t take the consequences of such a move into consideration.
“It shows the department didn’t do their homework, now they have to do crisis management,” he said, adding that the community had asked if there were alternative options to moving the pupils to the Eerste River school, and told this was the only option.
“If they have the alternatives, why choose a school 17km away from their homes?” he said.
Scottsdene principal Karel Cupido said pupils had been fully accommodated in a church, community hall and existing prefabricated classrooms at Scottsdene.
“Today (yesterday) is the first day we accommodated the whole school in three venues. There were some teething problems, like getting additional chairs, which were sorted out.
“Everything went smoothly. Last week, teachers committed themselves to provide quality education,” he said.