The Democratic Alliance (DA) in Gauteng has reported the Gauteng MEC for Education, Matome Chiloane, to the South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC) for violating Relebogile Secondary School learners’ right to access basic education.
Relebogile Secondary School learners have not been attending school since 9 February when a sinkhole appeared. This has put the learner’s safety at risk; hence the school was shut down.
The department is aware of the issue, and the DA has on several occasions engaged the MEC; however, he has failed to deliver on his promise to provide alternative accommodation to ensure that learning and teaching resume at this school.
The DA conducted an oversight inspection at the school today, and we were disappointed to discover that the identified alternative venue is still not ready and learners have not been attending school.
We were informed that the parents of ten learners have already indicated that they will be relocating their children to other provinces. In addition, the DA fears that more learners may leave or drop out of school, adding to the over 100 000 dropout rate from 2022.
For three months now, our learners have missed out on valuable learning and teaching time, causing them to fall behind on the curriculum, which also happened during the Covid-19 pandemic.
The DA demands that the MEC must speed up the process of providing all the necessary resources needed at the alternative venue, such as ablution facilities and electricity, to ensure that schooling resumes as a matter of urgency.
We will also write to the MEC to ascertain the progress concerning the Geoscience Engineer’s assessment of the school.
The DA is seeking the South African Human Rights Commission to urgently investigate this matter. It is unacceptable that our learners are now behind on the 2023 school curriculum.