Cape Town - The Western Cape Education Department (WCED) said it was fighting tooth and nail to place unplaced learners for the 2024 academic year despite having its budget slashed by a massive R700 million after a National Treasury cutback.
Part of this budget included the WCED’s plans to deliver 788 additional classrooms across the province in its Rapid School Build Programme implemented last year.
The department explained that over the past five years, on average, the number of learners in Western Cape schools had increased by 19 000 each year, with the number of placements growing rapidly.
To address this demand, the Western Cape government passed the largest-ever budget for education in March 2023, including a R2.9 billion infrastructure plan to build 21 new schools and 289 additional classrooms at existing schools.
The plan was to build 788 additional classrooms for the 2023 school year.
However, in June 2023, the plan came to an immediate halt when the National Treasury indicated that there would be serious cuts to provincial funding.
The Treasury recently indicated that it would not provide all of the funding to the province to cover the wage increase it negotiated for public service in this financial year, resulting in a shortfall of R537m.
At the same time, the Department of Basic Education cut conditional grants by R179.4m, meaning the department faced a budget cut of R716.4m, affecting its ability to build and maintain schools, and pay teachers.
Education MEC David Maynier, said the immediate cut, made within the current financial year, had a particular effect on placement.
“Despite this blow, we are fighting hard to expand the number of places available at schools in the Western Cape.
“We will still build nine new schools to accommodate the learners applying for the 2024 school year, as well as 496 classrooms in areas of high demand for placement.
“In total, our revised plan aims to deliver 608 additional classrooms across the province, which is still more than double the average number built annually before 2022/2023, despite the infrastructure budget cut,” Maynier said.
He said while all schools in the province were full, they would do everything to overcome these challenges. As of November 22, the department allocated places for 98.7% of the learners’ applications received for Grade 1 and 8 for 2024.
Thus far, placement was in progress for 1 568, or 1.3%, Grade 1 and 8 learners. Of these, 636 were learners for whom late applications were received after the admissions window closed, with some arriving as late as this past week.
“We understand that this is a stressful and anxious period for these parents. As a department, we are asking parents to work with us as we try to accommodate their children as soon as possible. We are exploring all available options to find a place for these learners for the start of the school year.”