The KwaZulu-Natal Department of Education has shared that the school infrastructure challenges facing the Education Sector were inherited from the Apartheid system.
The Department of Basic Education’s (DBE) National Education Infrastructure Management System (NEIMS) Report, published in May 2011, indicates that schools in the Eastern Cape and KwaZulu-Natal are in the worst condition, and that the problem of poor infrastructure is not exclusive to rural provinces.
The introduction of the Minimum Uniform Norms and Standards for Public School Infrastructure was to ensure that every school meets the basic level of infrastructure in order to function properly.
Recently, DBE extended the deadline for the submission of comments on the amendments to the regulations relating to the minimum norms and standards for public school infrastructure.
It has been reported that in this gazzete, deadlines to resolve school infrastructure backlog have been removed.
Referring to this, Equal Education has argued that without these deadlines, the Education Department will have no accountability measure on how they're addressing the backlog to school infrastructure.
In a statement, Motshekga said:
The department is committed to a constructive public participation process. It is for this reason that the public should be accorded ample opportunity to engage with the document and submit comments
The Education Department has revealed that the deadline for the submission of written comments has been extended to 31 July 2022.
The department has also uploaded, as per general practice, the document with the proposals on the website www.education.gov.za for public comment.
Basic Education prides itself in the progress made through the Accelerated Schools Infrastructure Delivery Initiative (ASIDI) and Sanitation Appropriate For Education (SAFE). It is said that the implementation of major programmes such as these are dependent on the availability of funding.
The ASIDI programme is funded through the School Infrastructure Backlog Grant, while the SAFE programme is also funded through the same grant, with co-funding from the Education Infrastructure Grant.
According to DBE, in the 2021/2022 financial year, both grants were fully utilised.
