The perpetual crisis in the education sector in this country has once again grabbed the headlines as high school pupils, parents, teachers unions and opposition parties seethe with anger at the government’s abuse of the schooling system.
The perpetual crisis in the education sector in this country has once again grabbed the headlines as high school pupils, parents, teachers unions and opposition parties seethe with anger at the government’s abuse of the schooling system.
Every year the education departments get the biggest share of both the national and provincial budgets.
Billions and billions are routinely allocated to education, yet the South African education system is a basket case in the ICU.
The Eastern Cape Education Department constantly pleads poverty and has even stopped making phone calls in an effort to save money.
If the national government grants massive amounts of money to education and the education department repeatedly runs out of funds, we have to ask how these allocations are spent.
While the greater part is earmarked for salaries, and a significant amount must go to teachers, it seems improbable that the bulk of these funds goes to teachers because teachers are poorly remunerated in government schools.
We can safely say that teachers are not being overpaid. The billions are certainly not being spent on school construction or maintenance.
A quick visit to any state run school in the Grahamstown district will show that the education department only spends petty cash on school maintenance.
So where are the billions going?
We don’t know because not even the Auditor General was able to make head or tails of the department’s books – but we have noticed that the local education department at St Aidan’s is looking rather swish.
And if you are looking for a parking lot filled with upmarket cars, don’t look at the teachers’ parking bays in any of the government schools – but you might want to return to St Aidan’s.
The stories about the education debacle in this province are likely to go on for the foreseeable future and it is possible that next week there might be a dramatic turn of events as a number of lobby groups demand a jail sentence for the Education MEC because he has not complied with court orders to hire teachers.
Watch this space.
