By Okhule Hlati and Yoliswa Tswanya
Cape Town - With thousands of pupils expected to return to school on Monday, officials are keeping a keen eye on matrics, some of whom have seemingly already dropped out.
Today the vast majority of pupils from grades R, 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 9, 10, 11, and those in School of Skills in years 1, 2 and 3, are expected to return to the classroom.
Most of these pupils have not been to school since March, following the announcement of the nationwide lockdown. The last cohort will return on August 31.
Western Cape Education MEC Debbie Schäfer’s spokesperson, Kerry Mauchline, said all schools in the province would be open and ready for the large group.
“School attendance by Grade 12s has averaged at around 70%. This excludes pupils who were granted an exemption to learn from home and are thus not ‘absent’.
“MEC Schäfer is concerned by this, as it is crucial that Grade 12s be at school for every school day left this year. While other grades will still have time next year to catch up any missed concepts, matrics must write and pass their exams in November/December,” Mauchline said.
National Professional Teachers’ Organisation of South Africa (Naptosa) president Basil Manuel said: “We have noted a number of challenges including that many schools don’t have a communication system, meaning children don’t know which 50% must come back.
“Also, the number of applications for home-schooling don’t correlate with the number of children that have been absent. We don’t quite know the reason why some of the pupils haven’t returned. Some provinces have reported as low as 60%.”
Meanwhile, Public Service Commission (PSC) commissioner Leonardo Goosen said it was up to the legislature to take forward the matter regarding provincial education head Brian Schreuder’s employment extension.
Schreuder’s contract was initially extended by two years and four months after he reached the retirement age of 65 in 2017.
This contract expired last year, and it was extended again until March next year.
An anonymous request for an investigation into the legality of the two-year extension was submitted to the PSC in February.
The PSC has found the second extension to be irregular.