Cape Town - The Western Cape education ministry has once again bemoaned the destruction and theft of infrastructure and valuable learning materials at local community schools over the recent winter school holidays.
Education MEC David Maynier said despite the department facilitating the instruction of over 400 security officials at its schools over the June/July holidays, certain schools, unfortunately, fell victim to rampant vandalism.
According to the WCED, during the aforementioned period at least 38 schools reported incidents of break-ins and vandalism.
Maynier said: “While the incidents were mainly concentrated in the metro education districts, thankfully only one of the incidents was considered major. Items stolen or damaged ranged from water piping to windows, cables to computers, fencing to fire safety equipment, stationery to security gates and numerous other items.
“The cost of replacing and repairing these is still being calculated and will divert funding away from the essential task of educating our learners. While the number of schools reporting incidents is a decrease from the 42 schools affected in the same holiday period in 2022, the number of incidents remains unacceptably high and negatively affects our children’s education,” he said.
Recently, the theft of water pipes at Crystal High School resulted in a large portion of the school being flooded, forcing the school to close temporarily, the department revealed.
“An entire group of learners had their teaching and learning time disrupted although the department was able to accommodate them at another school.
“At a time when we are providing extra classes to get our children #BackOnTrack, we simply cannot afford to have normal teaching and learning time disrupted by criminals targeting school property,” Maynier said.
“Someone, somewhere, knows who the perpetrators of these crimes are. Someone, somewhere, will be offered the goods stolen from our schools. We appeal to the public to report any details about these crimes, no matter how small, to the SAPS immediately, so we can shut down the criminal economy that is preying on our schools,” Maynier said.