Cape Town - In spite of budget limitations, education activist Vanessa le Roux believes that the Western Cape Education Department (WCED) had no intention of building schools in the province.
This comes after the department stated that as a result of the national government’s budget cuts, which affected numerous service delivery projects in the province, it would only be able to construct nine of 21 schools planned.
WCED spokesperson Bronagh Hammond said last year’s R790 million budget cut had impacted its plans to build 21 new schools in the province.
“Those cuts hit our infrastructure budget the most. Our conditional grant for infrastructure was cut by R179m, and then a further R243m had to be taken off our infrastructure budget,” said Hammond.
She said that while in the statement it said nine new schools, it was actually 10, with three replacement schools, which made it 13, and two of the 10 schools were for special needs.
A replacement school is a school that is built at the existing school site, replacing an old building. Also, Blue Ridge Precinct is divided into two schools, primary and secondary.
“The three replacement schools will also add additional capacity for the 2024 school year. In addition, there are classrooms being constructed at existing schools to provide additional accommodation. I
“Our revised plan aims to deliver 608 additional classrooms across the province, which is still more than double the average number built annually before 2022/23, despite the infrastructure budget cut,” said Hammond.
But Le Roux said that it was never the department’s intention to build schools. “In fact, they prey on the desperation of parents and give them gutter infrastructure in the name of mobile classrooms, with no intention to build new schools.”
She said: “Our Constitution never said they should provide basic education if the budget allows them to; the Constitution says they must provide basic education for each and every child in this province, and we allow these criminals to hide behind budget cuts. If they are in breach of the Constitution, they become criminals, and for far too long we have entertained these criminals at the expense of our children and communities.”
Asked about the impact that this would have on the placement of learners this year, the department said that as of November 22, 2023, they have allocated places for 119 110 (98.7%) of the learners for whom applications were received for Grades 1 and 8 for the 2024 school year.
“While we have placed 99.4% of learners, it is not yet clear how many extremely late applications we will receive and where they will be required. The WCED will be reviewing the numbers of learners at schools in the province following the 10-day snap survey,” Hammond added.
ANC spokesperson on education Muhammad Khalid Sayed said the provincial government was yet again deflecting focus and running away from its responsibility to provide quality education to the learners.
“While we do acknowledge that budget cuts in the education sector are a challenge that needs to be overcome, this provincial government has refused to use the budgetary and human resources that they already have at their disposal to drive access to schooling. The money being returned to Provincial Treasury reserves can be used for the building of new high schools,” said Sayed