Cape Town - The Western Cape Education Department (WCED) welcomed 35 872 teachers and 7 578 public service staff back to school on Monday.
MEC David Maynier said no major issues were reported as teachers and school-based staff in coastal areas reported for duty, with the academic year expected to start on Wednesday.
The teachers, who were expected to finalise timetabling schedules, class lists and curriculum plans are preparing for the return of 1.2 million pupils.
The aim is to ensure that teaching and learning commences from day one.
“We did have a number of schools where parents arrived seeking to apply for the current school year. We appeal to parents to go directly to their district office for assistance with placement, as we are centrally co-ordinating these very late applications for placement. Load shedding is presenting a challenge for our schools,” he said.
According to Maynier, a number of schools have already taken steps to become energy-resilient, with 41 having applied for solar installations.
“In addition, 25 schools have had their existing lights replaced with energy-saving LED lights through a pilot project with Stellenbosch University.
We are committed to doing all we can to support our schools to reduce their energy consumption and look forward to seeing other schools taking the initiative to address our energy crisis and reduce costs in the process.
“Load shedding also presents a challenge when we process extremely late applications onto the online system, slowing down the process.
We ask for parents’ patience and understanding in this regard, as we all navigate the challenges of load shedding together,” said Maynier.
National Professional Teachers’ Organisation of South Africa (Naptosa) said load shedding had become a nightmare to many sectors and one of the solutions that basic education should be looking at was having all schools fitted with solar power.
“This is because schools need power during the day for many things,” said Naptosa executive director Basil Manuel.
“Unless we can have a long-term plan such as that, then we would be failing our children because there seems to be no end in sight as the load shedding nightmare worsens.
Many teachers have complained about preparations for welcoming pupils being affected.”
Manuel said they were hoping to see a much better improvement in the coastal schools in terms of repairs.
“Also many schools had insufficient staff or the staff to learner ratio was bad, so hopefully more staff members have been appointed to conduct the work as it should be done. Provinces like Eastern Cape that had issues like access to textbooks which plagued schools last year must avoid having the same problems this year,” he said.
Cape Times