Motshekga to close thousands of small schools

Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga is in favour of shutting down thousands of small schools - a move that is likely to raise the ire of powerful teacher unions.

In an interview with the Sunday Times this week, Motshekga revealed she favours closing at least 1000 schools in the Eastern Cape alone - the worst-performing province in terms of matric results.

She said work had begun on formulating changes to the South African Schools Act that would lead to the closure of any high school with fewer than 135 pupils.

Motshekga said most of the schools that performed dismally in last year's matric exams had few pupils. Such schools still have to offer seven matric subjects, but often do not have enough teachers to specialise in any subject because every high school gets only one teacher per 35 pupils.

"Very often, people are reluctant to have schools close down because for every school that closes, a principal loses his job, but the current situation cannot continue."

She also raised issues of economies of scale, saying bigger schools had more money to serve pupils' needs.

"Schools that give us a 100% pass rate are generally shools that have more than 800 kids. They have decent money to run the schools."

Motshekga revealed that in the Eastern Cape there are schools with as few as three pupils, and Limpopo had schools with only six children each.

"In the Eastern Cape they have more than 5000 schools. They have too many schools for the learner population."

Motshekga said she anticipated resistance from unions, communities and powerful individuals in the affected areas.

"There is a lot of politics. Some of the schools were established by chiefs and are named after those chiefs' grandmothers. They have lots of sentiment around them."

She wants to change regulations in the act to make it easier for provincial education departments to close and amalgamate schools, pointing out that it takes a year to close a school because schooling must not be disrupted. Provinces were also afraid to close schools because the Western Cape was taken to court over the matter in 2013.

Initially the Western Cape government wanted to close 27 schools in 2012, citing poor performance and low pupil numbers.

After public hearings, the number was dropped to 18, but 17 of them took legal action.

In December last year, the Western Cape won the right to close 16 of the 17 schools.

This was after the Supreme Court of Appeal overturned an earlier order barring then education MEC Donald Grant from carrying out the closures.

In contrast to her many ANC colleagues who used the school closure as a rallying point against the Western Cape's DA government, Motshekga lauded the province. She said education departments could not be left powerless in the face of opposition from parents to closing underperforming schools.

Western Cape education MEC Debbie Schafer welcomed Motshekga's views on school closures.

"I think one needs to be careful of drawing the line too strictly at 135 learners per school, because some rural areas have special circumstances, but generally a school must be viable in order to exist, and it is not viable to have multigrade classes where one teacher must teach all pupils from Grade 1 to Grade 10 in a single class, as has happened."

In addition to school closures, Motshekga wants to change legislation so that education authorities have more say in the appointment of competent school principals.

"All too often, strong community individuals and union leaders hold the school to ransom to impose their candidates on a community. Bribery and corruption even take place. The education department cannot be powerless in who runs schools," she said.

Turning to the matric exams, Motshekga expressed regret and disappointment that the overall pass rate had decreased, but stressed that the standard of the exam was more important than the pass rate.

"We need to remember that this year was the first year that the CAPS [Curriculum and Assessment Policy Statements] curriculum was being examined. It meant that both teachers and learners did not have prior papers to learn from, and that some had clearly struggled to get through the whole curriculum.

"I do believe, however, that overall, our system of education, of learning and teaching, is improving."

Motshekga was disappointed with the poor results in KwaZulu-Natal and the Eastern Cape. The pass rate in KwaZulu-Natal dropped 7.7 percentage points, from 77.4% in 2013 to 69.7% last year.

She attributed this to the lack of a strong administrative system at district level, saying the province relied heavily on political leadership for direction.

"A quarter of our kids in the system are from KZN. It worries me when things fall apart there."

She said plans were in place to assist the province to copy the Gauteng model, which she said had a strong administrative system.

Motshekga said the difference between provinces that consistently performed strongly and those that struggled was that the stronger provinces had well-established district services and established bureaucracies that could function no matter which politicians were in charge.

"In Gauteng, the Western Cape and North West, there is consistent performance monitoring, even on a monthly basis. If a problem develops, it is picked up and addressed.

"I am particularly proud of North West, which shows how a rural province can excel. That is despite the fact that North West had four different education MECs in the previous five-year term. North West is solid.

"I am in favour of the stronger provinces helping the weaker ones. The Western Cape bureaucrats have assisted the Eastern Cape, and I am in favour of KZN MEC for education Peggy Nkonyeni sending her officials to Gauteng."

shobas@sundaytimes.co.za

joubertj@sundaytimes.co.za