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Vaalweekblad received this open letter from a Sonland Park resident who addressed it to the Office of the MEC- Gauteng Department of Education. We will also forward it to the local Schools Board:
I write this letter as a representative of a number of concerned and affected parents that reside in the area of Sonland Park, Falconridge and Plotte (informal/semi-formal settlement). This area has a primary school, namely; Sonlandpark Primary school, which caters for our children in English facilitation. The area also has a high school, namely, Overvaal Hoërskool which only caters for learning in Afrikaans. Both are government schools.
Although we have both primary and high schools in our area, the unfortunate thing is that our children cannot move from the Sonlandpark Primary school to the Overvaal Hoërskool because of differences in facilitation/language medium. As a result, we are forced to send them to schools outside of Sonlandpark and Falconridge just to accommodate their language-learning medium. The distance our children have to travel daily is quite costly. Most parents spend over R2 500 on a monthly basis on children’s transport alone, besides school fees at certain government schools. Furthermore, some Grade 12 learners in our area have irregular school times, owing to preparation for exams, which increases transport costs. The latter leads to students not attending regularly and even dropping out.
Consequentially, we sought assistance from The Department of Education in Vereeniging. I spoke to the office of Ms Dora Moloi and later with Mr John Ceronio who advised me to put a petition together. In a small survey conducted in Sonlandpark and Falconridge from the 23rd to the 24th of June 2016, we parents noticed we are sending our children to schools in the very areas students currently schooling at Overvaal Hoërskool come from. The Overvaal Hoërskool students in turn are transported by buses and taxis to this high school.
As a community we bring this to your attention as we want our children to attend high school at Overvaal Hoërskool, not to travel far to other areas to receive education in the English medium.
