Tomorrow (30 April) EE will be staging a picket together with learners of Moshesh Senior Secondary School at the Maluti District offices demanding that they be given teachers so that they can be taught. This is in line with a court order passed last year in November that the district and provincial department has so far not adhered to.
In June of 2012 EE visited Moshesh Senior Secondary school for the first time after learners had written a letter asking for help with the many problems the school was facing. At the core of the problems was that learners were not being taught due to teacher absenteeism and general shortages in educators.
After numerous attempts to engage with the relevant stakeholders, in November 2012 Palesa Manyokole from Moshesh, her parent, 9 other learners and Equal Education filed their founding affidavits with the Bisho high court seeking immediate intervention on the situation at the school. In November of 2013 Equal Education and the respondents reached a settlement agreement , that was made a court order prescribing a number of remedies to the challenges at Moshesh. The order prescribed adequate curriculum planning, the provision of teachers, the provision of guru teachers, a new principle in place, fixing the hostel, a catch up plan for the learners that had missed out on months of work and many more important instructions (see court order). Besides appointing an acting principal none of the court order has been adhered to.
When visiting the school a month ago we found that the school has grown in size from 349 learners in 2013 to 504 learners in 2014. This means that more teachers are needed, there are 8 vacant substantive educator posts. Out of the 18 subjects taught at Moshesh only 5 subjects have been fully reported on in the area of results and plans for improvement. There has been lack of support for educators and the department has still not provided any guru teachers, there is a lack of support from the district, lack of support for the acting principal, the school does not have enough textbooks and even though the department has undertaken to renovate the hostel, no real action has been taken. All these problems persist despite the court order that places an obligation on the department and the district to prioritize addressing the problems at the school.
We have since written the provincial department a letter (read here) that demands that they urgently address the matter of finding permanent educators for the school and address generally the challenges at the school by the 30th of April failing which the letter will serve as a notice in terms of the court order (clause 23) to approach the Bhisho High Court for a specific performance settlement. This week we sent a team back to Moshesh to run a series of activities with the learners with the last activity being a picket at the Maluti district offices to show that the learners are tired of the appalling conditions at the school. It has been disappointing and frustrating that after we had reached a favourable settlement in court, the learners at Moshesh are still in the same situation that they were in in 2012 if not worse. On the 30th of April we will be protesting with the learners of Moshesh demanding to be taught.
For more information contact:
Lumkile Zani
071 903 4497
Ntombesizwe Mkhonto
|
0717257665 Nombulelo Nyathela |
