If you’re looking for a school in Glenmore, you will find two identical block buildings surrounded by a dusty, arid field. There are no signs, but this is Qaqambile Senior Primary School, where nearly 80 children, wearing tidy blue and yellow uniforms, come to learn.
If you’re looking for a school in Glenmore, you will find two identical block buildings surrounded by a dusty, arid field. There are no signs, but this is Qaqambile Senior Primary School, where nearly 80 children, wearing tidy blue and yellow uniforms, come to learn.
There are only three teachers and no library at Qaqambile. Learners in Grades 5 through to 7 share a textbook between five of them.
When asked if there is anywhere the children can find books to read for research or pleasure, the school’s temporary teacher, Funekile Magilindane, pauses and thinks, “Not that I know of.”
He then amends his answer, “There are offices that have books, but people don’t go there.” The school children shake their heads when asked if they know of a library.
The most obvious resource the school lacks is teachers. Magilindane is the only teacher or staff member at the school on this particular day.
It is the second week that he has been left to manage three classrooms by himself – 75 learners in all. The other two teachers are away on a training course in Peddie.
When the children return from break, they sit in their three separate classrooms, Magilindane at his desk in another classroom, alone. The story of this school is not unique.
According to the Department of Education, in 2006 80% of South African schools were without a library. This is only a marginal improvement from 1996, when 82.1% had no library at all.
“Libraries should be one of those minimum resources in a school – an absolutely non-negotiable, essential resource,” said Marc Schafer, former head of the Education Department at Rhodes.
Schafer explains that there are no official standards schools need to meet in order to remain open. But he is equally baffled by this reality, “Surely there should be a base-line standard,” he says.
Discrepancies between different school’s resources can be vast, but schools like Qaqambile are severely handicapped by their proximity to infrastructure or to a regional department of education that will take notice.
According to Brian Fargher of Gadra Education in Grahamstown, all public schools need to be proactive about their needs.
Resource allocation is not necessarily a fair process. “[Glenmore] is a dying school,” says Fargher, “With such few students there shouldn’t be a school.”
He explains that teachers are allocated to schools based on the number of learners, but three teachers cannot teach all of the subjects. Schools with less than 100 learners are not viable to run.
“It would be cheaper to bus the children to another town,” says Fargher, rather than employ more staff. A 54km round-trip to and from Peddie is an option, but not a practical one.
“It’s a catch-22,” says Fargher. The children of Glenmore are afforded the bare minimum when it comes to their education.
They have a building with classrooms and chalkboards and a few educational posters lining the walls and, usually, they have a teacher or two.
When the bell rings they will shuffle back inside from the dusty playground and sit at their desks and act like learners. But they are just playing a passive game called school.
