The statement below follows an oversight visit to Isivivane Senior Secondary School in Queenstown by DA Shadow Minister of Basic Education, Ian Ollis MP. Please find attached a soundbite in English.
It is clear from the oversight visit to Isivivane Senior Seconday School in Queenstown today that the reason for the 0% percent pass rate, is a lack of government support – specifically a lack of teaching staff.
Not one of the 17 matric candidates at Isivivane passed their final exam last year, making them one of two schools in the Eastern Cape and nine countrywide to receive a zero percent pass rate.
This failure to provide these children with a quality education, which should open the door to job opportunities for our young people, is symbolic of the leadership crisis in the Provincial education department specifically and in basic education generally.
What’s worse, the 106 learners currently at this school are being robbed of bright futures by lack of teaching staff to offer them the academic support they need. Further, none of the four teachers (including the principal), is specialised in key subjects such as Science and Technology which are key subjects for job opportunities and therefore socioeconomic development. These subjects are supposedly a major priority for government, just not at Isivivane Senior Seconday School .
Scholar transport was promised and never provided for grades 8 and 9 particularly when those learners were merged here by the department from other schools. Some learners who come from 3 nearby villages have to walk up to 9km to school and the numbers are dropping as they stay at home due to a lack of scholar transport.
The country’s underperformance in Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) indicates that the ANC government is failing to allocate the required resources to schools to improve these subject outcomes.
These ill-fated conditions do not bode well for those learners who might want to pursue careers in the fields where these subjects are the prerequisite.
This is a massive indictment on the uncaring ANC government and the provincial education department whose leadership sets young people up to fail.
The school is plagued by crises and desperately requires urgent intervention. The principal is the only maths teacher and he is frequently called away to meetings. Last week he missed 3 days of teaching due to meetings. Today he is away at a meeting instead of teaching maths.
Basic Education Minister, Angie Motshekga, who bears ultimate responsibility for ensuring our children get the quality education they deserve must step up and provide leadership and make learners’ interests her top priority.
It is the Minister’s responsibility to make sure that provincial education departments are helping these schools to better serve their learners. Minister Motshekga must urgently intervene in this crisis and detail what plans her department has in place to give the necessary support needed by the dismally performing school to produce highly-performing learners.
It’s totally unacceptable that the numerous requests made by the school to receive more teachers seem to have been completely ignored.
The Department of Basic Education considers the learner numbers too low for the school to be considered “viable”, however it is the only high school in the area – if it closed the learners would have to travel far to receive an education.
Minister Motsekga must ensure the conditions that lead to schools such as Isivivane Secondary performing so dismally do not continue unabated.
The DA has shown that with meaningful interventions, we can improve the quality of education and therefore provide opportunities to young people.
That is why, in the DA-run Western Cape, no school recorded a zero percent pass rate due to our interventions, such as introducing extra classes on Saturdays, plenty of extra-curricular activities, supporting active School Governing Body (SGBs), which have improved performance levels and ultimately the opportunities for our learners.