Special needs schools will face their own unique challenges when they open on 8 June.
So said Gauteng MEC for education, Panyaza Lesufi, upon his visit to Randburg Clinic School on 28 May, where he met with school staff and the media to discuss the school’s readiness.
The majority of learners at the school have autism and the school has a hostel.
After principal Ronald Batchelor gave Lesufi a tour of the school, which included a look at sanitising stations and social distancing markers, Lesufi offered encouragement to nursing staff and teachers present, saying the department was ready to assist them if they had any concerns.
While looking at a classroom, Batchelor discussed some of the issues the school had with opening on Monday.
“What we need at the moment is clear guidelines on hostels. We don’t know how to sort that problem out,” the principal said.
“We are currently the only ESBD [emotional, social and behavioural disorders] school in Gauteng. Part of our education is to be nurturing. Holding our children… is part of how their behaviour has improved remarkably. Now we have to go back and tell those children we cannot provide them with that support anymore. That is a major concern.”
Furthermore, many learners with autism may refuse to wear a face mask, and many will object to the texture of hand sanitiser.In response, Lesufi expressed an interest in visiting the school on opening day. He said special needs education was a difficult sector to reopen at stage three of the lockdown, but that they would have to “soldier on” along with assistance from the department and experts.
He acknowledged that the school needed interpretation of the guidelines provided by government.
“I am happy that they have raised that element so that we can find a way of benchmarking and assisting them,” Lesufi said.
“In some instances you will need to feed a child, you will need to carry a child, you will need to play with a child. So the element of social distancing, the element of not touching, it is a foreign concept here. So we just need experts to guide us and assist us, to work around those issues.”
Only in a few isolated instances will entire schools have to wait before opening. Examples of this include where a learner tested positive for Covid-19 in Bronkhostspruit and another incident where a school’s fence needs repairing to ensure the screening of all learners before they enter the property.
