DURBAN - MINISTER of Basic Education Angie Motshekga is expected to give a detailed briefing on progress for the reopening of schools in Pretoria on Tuesday.
Motshekga was expected to speak about strategies to save the academic year and ensure that learners and teachers will be safe from any possible infection of Covid-19.
This includes learner admissions, filling of vacant posts, infrastructure, school furniture, personal protective equipment, textbooks, the National School Nutrition Programme, timetabling under Covid-19 2022 restrictions and readiness for teaching and learning.
Vacant posts:
In 2020, the department noted that the vacant posts were created by attrition, retirements, promotions and even Covid-19 fatalities.
However, late last year, about 2 000 posts in the province were said to remain vacant in 2022 while the Department of Education halted retrenchments.
Infrastructure:
R138 million was estimated to be the cost of damage to schools caused in Johannesburg and KwaZulu-Natal during the unrest in July.
This included 144 schools, eight education circuit management offices and three education centres, which were verified as being damaged in the province.
A number of schools were damaged by storms during the year and holidays recently.
This forced some schools to cram learners in small rooms while others had to use classrooms with no roofs.
Teacher unions told the Daily News that they were concerned about the readiness of the schools.
The main concerns included the state of schools looted and those damaged by the recent storms.
Pupils in the inland provinces of Gauteng, the Free State, Mpumalanga, Limpopo and North West were the first to return to school on Wednesday.
Learners in the coastal provinces of KwaZulu-Natal, the Eastern Cape, Western Cape and Northern Cape are expected to return exactly a week later on January 19.
Daily News