Johannesburg – The National Teachers’ Union (Natu) has urged the Department of Basic Education (DBE) to intervene and resolve KwaZulu-Natal’s school nutrition saga and other scandals.
Natu’s call comes after the department has been in the news for the school nutrition scandal which resulted in thousands of learners being deprived of their only daily meal in the past weeks and many other failures the department has shown over the years.
“From where we sit as Natu, the KZN Provincial Education Department is in ICU, needing urgent intervention to prevent a definite death,” it said.
According to the union, the department has demonstrated incompetence, poor leadership, and incapacity to administer the affairs of the critical department.
It said the feeding scheme saga was one of the many unresolved challenges which the KZN provincial department has failed to deal with.
Natu stated the following as the challenges the department failed to resolve:
- Filling vacant posts, which has resulted in many schools not being able to deliver quality education owing to a dire shortage of educators.
- Substitute posts are not filled and when a teacher takes a leave of absence, learners are left without a teacher for the entire period of the leave.
“In 2022, the province failed to pay the qualifying educators their 1.5% pay progression on time, many schools did not receive their learning and teaching support materials LTSM allocations for the 2022/2023 academic year, there was no disbursement of monies meant to assist schools to purchase and maintain furniture and equipment and Grade R Grants for 2022/2023 were not disbursed.
“When asked about these shortcomings, the department attributes these administrative lapses to budget cuts, despite additional funding of more than R3 billion made available to them by the National Treasury.
“The 2023/2024 budget allocation for the Education Department in the province is more than R60 billion. Certainly, in the disbursement of these funds, the core business of the department must be prioritised but this does not appear to be the case.“
Natu also said the recent proposal for mergers and closures of more than 900 schools in KZN was their major concern.
It blamed the department for ignoring and not including them in its consultations, before arriving at such a decision.
“Certainly, before such an action can be taken, there are many things to consider. For instance, it is almost certain that a merger of schools will necessitate an increased need for scholar transport, to get learners to the aggregated schools, and back every day,” it said.
It added that the proposed mergers and closures involving 900 schools in one go was a clear demonstration of the department’s inability to provide human and physical resources, such as laboratories and libraries in rural schools.
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