Noordgesig residents concerned about burned school

The community and parents of learners at Noorgesig Secondary School closed down the school on July 15 due to concerns that the Gauteng Department of Education (GDE) and other responsible stakeholders are not attending to the matter of rebuilding the school as a matter of urgency.

On June 27 about a week and a half before the schools reopened for the third term, some of the classes and buildings of Noorgesig secondary caught fire.

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This resulted in the loss of equipment that was essential to the school.

An electrical fault is suspected to have been the cause of the fire and an investigation is currently ongoing.

The School Governing Body (SGB) had an engagement with the Gauteng Department of Education after the incident occurred regarding the rebuilding of the infrastructure.

Ismael Steenkamp, an SGB member indicated that due to the incident, learners are now forced to rotate and attend classes in groups, thus causing poor academic performance and poor results production.

“We have requested in our engagement that GDE bring us mobile classes and get the school ready but up to now we have not received any mobile classes.

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“They are rather prioritising the refurbishment of the admin block when we have about 300 learners in a disadvantage because this means they must now rotate,” said Steenkamp.

Steenkamp also indicated that the same issue happened at Noorgesig Primary School about seven years ago and the community had to fight to get the school back in form and be rebuilt.

“This is a simple request, the plan has been drawn for this school and the budget is there. When the primary was done, we were told that the budget for the high school was already approved and everything was sorted.

“However we are still sitting today without a school and we are told that they redirected the budget. Why not direct the budget back, why redirect something so important to the kids?” asked Steenkamp.

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Ward 29 Councillor, Brenda Dammie expressed concerns over the Department of Education taking time to resolve the issue which is compromising the education of local children.

“I’m not happy because these children’s time is being wasted and it’s only a few months until the matrics starts writing.

“We need to resolve this to avoid problems for our children. The school must operate, the Department must come, I’m shocked that two weeks down the line the mobile classes are not here,” said Dammie.

Questions have been sent to the Gauteng Department of Education and a follow up with an update will follow.