EC special schools desperately need upgrade

THE Eastern Cape legislature’s portfolio committee on education has given the department 30 days to come up with a plan on how to build or upgrade public special schools.

The department was last week given until next month to furnish the legislature committee with a report on their plans to build and open new special schools in a bid to curb overcrowding in existing schools.

There are only 42 special schools across the province which cater for thousands of learners living with various disabilities.

The shortage of adequate facilities results in thousands of eligible pupils, especially from rural parts of the province, having to stay at home as they could not be accommodated in the few schools available.

Tabling their report at the legislature last week after scrutinising the department’s 2015-16 annual report, the portfolio committee found that the department was moving at a “snail’s pace” in developing adequate infrastructure in special schools.

The committee, chaired by ANC MPL Fundile Gade, said such delays were detrimental to the inclusive education of affected pupils and as such were keeping hundreds of disabled pupils out of the classroom due to space constraints.

Gade told the legislature sitting that the department must ensure that special schools were treated equally with the same support as other schools and be prioritised in terms of infrastructure development and procuring of resources.

Gade’s committee also revealed that the R644-million special schools’ allocation was underspent by R54.2-million in 2015-16 “as it (the education department) continued to struggle to retain and fill vacant posts of support and professionally qualified staff, particularly specialists”.

Those include psychologists, speech therapists, audiologists and occupational therapists.

It was recommended that the department consider improving the salary grades of professionals “in order to attract and retain the muchneeded specialists”.

The committee again gave the department a month to provide another plan on how they planned to deal with the issue of the recruitment of nonteaching staff.

Gade yesterday said his committee could not provide the exact number of the pupils on the waiting list, “but it was quite a sizeable percentage, especially in rural areas”.

Departmental spokesman Malibongwe Mtima could not be reached at the time of writing yesterday.

However, in their annual report, the department stated that all 42 provincial special schools must be improved and strengthened so that they could provide quality education.

The report further states that the under-expenditure was as a result of some critical support staff posts not being filled, while some of those recently employed were yet to receive their salaries. —