Parents stood in long lines outside the Metro NorthEducation District Offices in Parow on Tuesday in efforts to place and register their children for the 2023 school year. Picture: Armand Hough/African News Agency (ANA)
Cape Town - Members of anti-immigrant group Operation Dudula protested at the Metro North district offices on Tuesday where long lines of parents queued to try and register their children for the 2023 school year.
The group handed over a list of demands to district staff who engaged with the small contingent on Tuesday morning, ahead of schools reopening on Wednesday.
Operation Dudula representative, Lulamile Bavuma, said that thousands of pupils still needed placement
“(Parents) are coming from various areas to be placed on a waiting list or to be placed because up to now the department has not come back to them with their applications.
We are here to... do all we can to assist them in getting into the education system. It is their democratic right and it must be prioritised,” said Bavuma.
Among their list of demands, Operation Dudula called for the immediate placement of South African learners at their schools of choice; immediate employment of qualifying and deserving South African teachers in both public and private schools; and that the department of basic education launches a forensic audit to determine the number of foreign teachers in both public and private schools.
WCED spokesperson, Bronagh Hammond, confirmed the contingent was at their district offices.
“Metro North District was managing learner admissions when a small group of people started to make a noise in the crowd. The district staff engaged with them and heard their concerns.
“They gave the District Director a letter.
“They then left the premises following this engagement. “In terms of teachers - Just 31 out of our 33 652 teachers last year, or 0.09%, were foreign nationals. In 2021, there (was) just 1 foreign learner joining the 1.1 million learners in our schools each year,” said Hammond.
Education MEC David Maynier, said: “Basic education is a right afforded to all children by our Constitution. Learners from other countries accounted for an average of 7% of the new learners joining our schools from outside the Western Cape each year – just 1 549 learners in 2021 for example. We understand that waiting for placement when applying late can be frustrating for parents, but the fact is that the high demand for placement in our province is not the result of learners from other countries attending our school.”
The WCED this week said they received 25 212 late applications for Grade 1 and 8 (after April 15, 2022) this year, including 272 extremely late applications received after schools closed on December 15 2022.
“We expect to receive many more once schools reopen. It is very difficult to place learners at this extremely late stage, and parents arriving now must be prepared for a delay in the placement of their children,” said Maynier.
ANC MPL, Khalid Sayed said: “It is not surprising that yet again thousands of learners are not placed in schools in the province. It exposes the DA-led government’s complacency and lack of political will to address the root cause of this.
The National Government provided sufficient support to the province through increased infrastructure budget and increased teaching posts, it is therefore totally unacceptable that parents who applied timeously and correctly are still told that their children don’t have places in schools.”
Cape Times