Dear Editor
The Eastern Cape Department of Education’s plan to merge and close more than 1,000 schools without first ensuring alternative arrangements for learners is a reckless approach that risks leaving thousands of children stranded without access to education.
For many families, the closure of a local school will mean children must travel long distances, often without reliable transport or safe boarding options. In rural areas, where scholar transport is already limited and hostels are scarce, this policy will deepen inequality and force learners to drop out of school altogether.
The Democratic Alliance (DA) supports the principle of improving education by ensuring every learner is taught in a safe, functional, and viable school. But we cannot support closures where the Department has made no provision for affected learners.
That is why we will be tabling a motion in the Legislature to prevent any school from being rationalised until a full audit has been completed of every child. This audit must confirm that each learner has either secure transport to a new school or placement in a state hostel.
The reality is that classrooms across the province are already overcrowded, and the hostel programme has all but collapsed.
Education MEC, Fundile Gade, has in the past assured parents of schools earmarked for rationalisation that learners will be provided with scholar transport, and that the Department was embarking on a hostel rollout initiative to accommodate learners to reduce the transport burden.
However, in the last financial year, only one new hostel was built, while the scholar transport programme had its budget severely cut, leaving 60,000 learners who qualify for transport stranded.
Under these conditions, school closures cannot possibly benefit learners. The rationalisation drive is being presented as progress, but in truth, it shifts the burden onto learners, parents, and teachers who are already struggling.
Consolidation without proper planning will only exacerbate educational inequality and erode the dignity of communities whose schools are at the heart of their daily lives.
The DA’s intervention seeks to protect the right of every child in the Eastern Cape to accessible, quality education. We will fight to ensure that no learner is left behind while government cuts costs on paper but fails to deliver in practice.
The people of the Eastern Cape deserve an education system that opens doors, not one that closes them. Real change means leadership that listens, plans, and delivers on the promise of opportunity for every child.
Regards
Horatio Hendricks MPL
DA Shadow MEC for Education
