Or so it looks after three days back in the classroom for Grahamstown's public schools.
Or so it looks after three days back in the classroom for Grahamstown's public schools.
In previous years, our first-day stories have been about school transport failing to arrive, no funds for the school meal schemes, no textbooks or no teachers.
No such news – yet.
And as far as scholar transport is concerned, MEC Weziwe Tikana announced yesterday that more than 1 000 public transport operators had signed contracts with the Department of Transport. "99% of the 57 000 EC learners have been transported," Tikana says.
During this year's back to school week, Business Day confirms that the Eastern Cape education department has hired auditors PricewaterhouseCoopers to manage the R82 million payment to 90 schools in the province that had to pay teachers last year with their own funds.
It looks like the Grahamstown-based Legal Resources Centre-led class action may at last see results. Constituted with a nominally similar goal – to improve public education – the Education Alliance has stated its terms: "The Department must provide resources, teachers must teach, learners must learn and parents must take interest in the education of their children."
It seems ironic then that local members of Alliance partner the Congress of South African Students halted classes at Grahamstown's TEM Mrwetyana on the pupils' first day back.
Protests can be a wake-up call.
But the wake-up call has already been delivered to the Department through the LRC-led class action outcome.
It's hard to see what outcome disrupting the school day might achieve.
While tertiary institutions gear up for this year's registration, the Alliance has called for the scrapping of University application and registration fees.
Calling for the government to put in places other sources of funding for tertiary education, the Alliance said in a statement this week, "It is difficult to understand why a prospective student in need of financial assistance in the first place would be required to pay an application fee and a registration fee."
It looks like there may be more disruptions at tertiary institutions. Friday 24 January to Sunday 25 January it will be hot again, and children across the town will be looking for places to cool off – whether at the beach or Grey Dam.
In December/ January 2013/14 the NSRI responded to 31 fatal drowning incidents. Drownings are listed as one of the top causes of unnatural death amongst children in South Africa, according to Netcare.
And most holiday drownings, they say, are from inland areas – private swimming pools, rural dams and rivers.
If you can teach someone to swim, please do.
