School safety and literacy top of mind for new education minister Siviwe Gwarube

Basic education minister Siviwe Gwarube has embarked on her “Learning and Listening” campaign, starting with a visit to the Eastern Cape.

The initiative is designed to give her a comprehensive understanding of the education sector’s unique challenges and opportunities across the country.

The minister began her tour accompanied by Eastern Cape education MEC Fundile Gade.

Reflecting on the day’s activities Gwarube said: “It’s been an incredibly productive day ePhondweni with MEC Gade. We will present a comprehensive report from all the provincial visits and an implementation plan to address the challenges the provinces are facing. It’s important.”

She emphasised the need for provinces to share successful strategies and lessons learned.

“I would like provinces to share recipes of success/lessons learnt with each other where they are getting things right. It’s going to take innovation, courageous leadership and tough decisions to get our education system firing on all cylinders.”

Gwarube’s tour is part of a broader initiative to understand the diverse educational landscapes across the nine provinces. She expressed her commitment to the process.

“You’ll recall I committed to ‘Learning and Listening’, meeting stakeholders, getting acquainted with the sector, but more importantly going to see for myself the challenges and wins in our provinces. We start off in Nelson Mandela Bay (NMB), Gqeberha. The area is facing a crisis of crime in certain communities, affecting our pupils and teachers. We are not protecting teaching time if people aren’t safe at schools. We need the police to work with us on this,” she said.

The Eastern Cape has been facing extortion and violence in schools, with a recent incident the killing of a primary school principal.  

Gwarube expressed concern during her visit and spoke about safety in schools. 
 
“One of the issues I came here to address is around safety in schools and in communities, such as in the northern suburbs of NMB and in the OR Tambo district, where we are seeing a rise in criminality in communities affecting schools,” she said.

The minister stressed the importance of a co-ordinated approach.

“For us to deliver good quality education in the country, we cannot do it alone. We are going to need the minister of police and criminal intelligence. We are going to need all the departments to work together to say how do we tackle organised crime? Once we tackle that we are able to deal with keeping our schools safe,” she said in an interview with the SABC.

She underscored the connection between community violence and school safety: “Violent communities will breed violent schools.”

Gwarube outlined her priorities for the next five years.

“We need to improve our literacy rates, we need to deal with infrastructure and infrastructure backlogs, we need to ensure we are getting early childhood development access to younger kids. We need to make sure we are looking after teacher training. We need to make sure we are looking at inclusive education, such as how do we include and incorporate pupils who are differently skilled,” she said.

Gwarube’s provincial visits will culminate in a detailed report and action plan aimed at addressing the diverse educational challenges and opportunities across the country.

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