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Eastern Cape Education MEC, Fundile Gade, has implored school principals and teachers to focus all their energy on teaching and learning, and not allow themselves to be defocused by things outside the scope of his department.
He made the remarks during the last leg of his engagement with school principals, held at the Assemblies of God Convention Centre in Mthatha, on April 12.
This final leg of Gade’s engagement meeting with principals was with the school principals from Alfred Nzo East and West, as well as OR Tambo Inland and Coastal districts.
During the engagement, school principals raised several issues, such as poor road infrastructure, the scholar transport debacle, and schools having no access to water and sanitation, as some of the challenges they were grappling with that may demoralise staff and ultimately lead to poor results at schools facing such problems.
Gade, in his response, said such problems were not the responsibility of his department but pledged his full support to assist on challenges that were in the scope of his department.
These included beefing up security at schools, as well as hiring support staff to attend to administrative tasks.
Gade announced that his department had set aside R59 million to hire 1 000 security personnel at schools situated in crime hotspot areas, during the current 2024/2025 financial year.
He further said that over 300 support staff positions will be advertised for schools that had vacancies for such posts.
Gade said,
“For example, the Department of Education is not responsible for the scholar transport debacle, but that ends up being its problem and our principals are hurled with insults as a result of a debacle that is totally outside the realm of the department.”
He said that hiring of security at schools was also going beyond their mandate as a department, but the Department of Education could not wait for another government department while children were not going to school due to crime.
He said his department was diverting money meant for education to deal with crime at schools.
Gade praised principals for being at the forefront of consistent improvement in the matric pass rate of the province, adding that the improvement was not in quantity only, but quality as well.
The province is targeting an 85 percent matric pass rate for the Class of 2024.
