Lesufi’s remarks prove that ideology is more important to education department than quality education
21 November 2017
Shortly after the release of the contentious National Education Bill followed a new flood of remarks against Afrikaans education by the Gauteng MEC for Education Panyaza Lesufi. He stated in the past week that there was no more place for single-medium schools in this country (unless, of course, these are English) and that Laerskool Danie Malan would be investigated formally after complaints about too many Afrikaans classes.
According to Carien Bloem, AfriForum’s Project Coordinator for Education, these remarks are indicative of ignorance about the value of mother-tongue education. “It is also clear that quality education offered by schools plays no role whatsoever in the education authorities’ planning, but only the enforcing of national demographics on all terrains – also schools on local level.”
She attributes the problem of children who cannot be accommodated by the Gauteng schools directly to the non-performance of the MEC and his Department. “The Province already shows a shortage of 195 schools,” Bloem says.
According to the Department of Education, 17 schools have been built over the past two years, while available statistics show that about 120 schools have been closed up to now. “If the Department had rather focused their expenditures on the expansion of infrastructure and the rehabilitation of dysfunctional schools, rather than on playing political games over issues such as the language policies of functional schools, the school placement crisis would have been much smaller,” says Bloem.