It's been seven days since almost 1 400 KwaDukuza primary pupils stopped going to school, where up to 120 of them were crammed into one classroom.
Tinley Manor Primary School was shut down by parents and members of the community who marched in protest at the overcrowding. The march was led by the ANC Youth League in the area.
Secretary Sphamandla Khumbuza said there were nine classrooms and 11 mobile structures for Grades 1 to 7.
They brought the matter to the department’s attention in 2004 but it was only in 2012 that they received mobile classrooms.
“The department has been promising to build phase two for years.”
He said a department representative from the infrastructure unit told the community that construction could start in September.
A teacher who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the children may as well be at home. “What can they learn when they are uncomfortable, squashed in threes in a desk made for two?
"It is so hot in the room that they feel sick and the teacher does not have time to attend to all the children.”
The teacher said the smaller classes had about 50 children while the bigger classes required two different subject teachers.
“As a teacher, I feel useless to these children. I feel powerless to perform my duty. There are hands that will stay up the whole lesson without me being able to get to them because there are just too many,” he said.
Zakes Gumede, the SA Democratic Teachers Union secretary in the Albert Luthuli Region, said sending a child to school in those conditions was just for “babysitting”.
Provincial secretary Nomarashiya Caluza said this school wasn’t the only one that was grossly overcrowded.
“The Department of Education is failing dismally in attending to such challenges. What is even worse is that when results are expected, the department will not mention the challenges our teachers are facing, the conditions under which they are expected to teach, and under which some of the poorest of the poor children are expected to be taught.”
Education spokesperson Kwazi Mthethwa said the department was urgently working on a solution and progress would be communicated in due course.