Principal: ‘Give us hope’

POLOKWANE – Empty promises by the department of education have brought many schools to their knees in the past and Westenburg Secondary School appears to be no exception.

According to the school’s acting principal, Jimmy Steele, in spite of several issues at the school having been resolved since he commenced his duties on September 15 2014.

“I believe that we have made good progress in improving the academic atmosphere, some teachers started to take co-ownership and responsibility, we installed telecommunication systems, we instituted a lot of administrative procedures, we fixed a lot of furniture ourselves and started to create a real school atmosphere with some traditions being implemented,” Steele said.

In spite of these changes, however, the school is in a quagmire and seems to be sinking slowly but surely due to a shortage of teachers, textbooks, stationery and furniture.

“All the changes, which we believe are for the best, can only be upheld with enough teachers, money and the support of the department of education,” Steele this week lamented in a letter sent to the department and several media houses.

The school has struggled with a shortage of teachers since the beginning of the year and the school management submitted several applications to the department to appoint teachers, a situation Review has reported on repeatedly. There were three temporary teachers at the school, but two of the teachers left after not getting paid for two months. Steele confirmed that the school needed at least four more teachers, two of whom should be Afrikaans-speaking.

“We have applied several times appoint teachers, but seven of our applications was approved and only one appointed. In the past there were up to 57 learners per class, which we managed to bring down. If teachers are not appointed soon, the number of learners per classroom will once again shoot up,” Steele said.

He said the profiles of teachers who had resigned were submitted, and additional candidates were also recommended, but not appointed.

The school also faced the challenge of not having enough textbooks and there is also a shortage of furniture. Added to this, the department had not paid the school’s norms and standards money for the year. The school is a no-fee school and depended on this subsidy and fundraisers to keep head above water. The monies were due at the end of April, but to date no payment had been made. “We cannot pay monthly accounts like water and electricity, telephone, and contract with photocopiers. This amid the exams and we don’t have money to buy paper to photocopy exam papers,” Steele said.

Steele added that pupils were writing exams as per the timetable issued and question papers set by the department, but the papers were only set in English. “We have to translate the question papers to Afrikaans, and this puts a lot of pressure on the few Afrikaans-speaking teachers available,” Steele said.

“We are either a parallel or dual medium school – our status could not be verified as yet – with instruction languages being Afrikaans and English and offering Afrikaans, English and Sepedi as home languages,” he explained.

“We were confident that we would be able to help the school make a u-turn. I have tried my best; I am sorry,” Steele concluded. Sam Makondo, department of education spokesperson, said the school’s management was given a mandate to recommend teachers. “Unfortunately they recommended teachers who resigned from the system. The school acted against the mentioned circular,” Makondo said.

He said the delivery of furniture was delayed by logistics to appoint a new service provider.

“All shortages will be catered for just after the appointment of a new service provider in due course. The challenge on delivery of textbooks can be directed to the department through ways that the principal is aware,” Makondo said.

He added that the department is processing norms and standards funds and if all relevant documents were submitted the school will receive their norms and standards before end June.

“Westenburg is a English and Afrikaans school, which the School Governing Body (SGB) is aware of. Unfortunately it is reported that educators in the school are struggling to also use Afrikaans. The SGB and the school were advised to work on post provisioning so as to cater for both languages.”.

Westenburg Secondary School is not the only school in the province, or the country that has experienced problems such as these on a continuous basis, with the media consistently reporting on them. However, judging from these media reports, it is rare that solutions are found and implemented, to the cost of the education of the country’s children.