Damaged schools, infrastructure and lost study materials: What now for KZN pupils?

With 630 schools affected by last week’s devastating floods in KwaZulu-Natal and 101 schools remaining inaccessible due to damaged roads and bridges, education experts agree that government faces a mammoth task in getting teaching and learning back on track in the flood-hit province.

And added to that, KZN education officials face the challenge of not only dealing with damaged infrastructure, but also having to contend with grade 12 pupils who were affected by the Covid-19 pandemic and last year’s deadly July unrest that disrupted their schooling.

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Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga and KZN Education MEC Kwazi Mshengu have this week been visiting schools affected by the deluge to assess the damage.

It was estimated it would cost government as much as R442 million to repair damaged schools in KZN, with most of them having lost study materials and furniture.

The floods have also claimed the lives of more than 440 people, including 57 children, one teacher and a food handler.

Alternative schools

Speaking to The Citizen on Thursday, education expert Professor Mary Metcalfe said the urgent task for education officials was to look for alternative schools for pupils, whose schools were badly damaged by floods and remained inaccessible.

Metcalfe said most of the damaged schools appeared to be primary schools.

“The number of schools affected need to be identified and they need to be given priority access to alternative schools if the school cannot accommodate them at the moment,” she said.

Metcalfe said the Department of Basic Education also needed to get accurate information on which schools were affected in order to devise a plan on how to urgently fix them.

“There has to be a differentiated approach that’s focused on getting schools that are not functioning at the moment, functioning. A lot of that is costly.

“It’s to do with mobile classrooms, making sure water is provided and it’s in many cases dependent on other components of government to repair damaged infrastructure.”

Focus on matric pupils

During his visit to one of the damaged schools in the eThekwini district, KZN Education MEC Kwazi Mshengu said the province was looking into short-term and long-term plans to ensure pupils were not deprived of their education.

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These included prioritising grade 11 and 12 pupils, rotational learning, improving access to damaged schools and repairing infrastructure.

Mshengu said they were hoping “normal schooling” would resume in three weeks’ time.

“We will be working on both short term and long term solutions working with other departments, particularly the Department of Transport because we have seen quite a number of schools that are not accessible because of damages to roads and bridges. We are quite confident that we will be able to get things right.

“We just have to work together and plead with our communities to be patient. We know that these are frustrating times, but working together is what will bring us to our intended objectives,” he said.

Despite focusing on grade 11 and 12 pupils, Metcalfe said access to schools and study materials was of utmost importance at this stage.

This batch of pupils started their grade 10 during the Covid-19 pandemic and last year, they had to deal with the riots in July that affected more than 50 schools due to vandalism.   

Metcalfe said: “Their access into schools, their catch up and provision of relevant study materials is important because it would be very hard for grade 12 learners to continue with their studies.

“The preconditions for learners to be able to return to school is sufficient classrooms, furniture, having water on-site, functioning sanitation systems and functioning national school nutrition programme.”

Displaced families

Another major challenge faced by education officials in KZN was the number of pupils who were displaced by floods, Metcalfe said.

Nearly 4,000 homes were completely destroyed while it was estimated that more than 40,000 people were displaced by these floods.

“There are also grade 12 learners who have been displaced, they may be back at school but they don’t have a home.”

Another issue that needed urgent attention, Metcalfe added, was the fact that some teachers who worked at schools in rural areas did not live in these areas.

 She said this posed a challenge in the wake of the floods due to inaccessible roads and bridges.

“Whereas it may be possible for learners to access schools, it’s not always possible for all of the teachers to access schools if access roads have been damaged.”

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