Education facilities in Limpopo – including four schools – built at a cost of R143-million are standing empty and being vandalised despite a desperate need for proper infrastructure in the province.
The provincial department of education allocated R106-million for the construction of three circuit offices in 2012 – one in Bochum (R33-million), another in Tshipse (R45-million) and a third in Mapela (R28-million).
The offices were to double as teacher-training facilities. But the buildings are still empty and thieves have begun scavenging metal from them.
A new school for the blind in Mankweng, 40km outside Polokwane, is covered in weeds and vandals have broken doors and windows, and stripped the building of its fittings.
The school has 20 classrooms, two blocks of hostels, two residences, a kitchen and a dining hall. Building was completed in June, and pupils and teachers of Setotolwane School, which had been declared “unfit”, were expected to move in.
Statistics SA released its Focus on Schooling in Limpopo report yesterday, showing that of the 154351 pupils who started school in 2001, only 53.4% wrote matric in 2013. Only 38.3% of them passed the National School Certificate.
In 2012, the department was unable to provide textbooks on time. Deliveries were finally made after the department was taken to court.
Provincial department spokes-man Paena Galane failed to explain why the three circuit offices remained unoccupied.
Asked why the department abandoned the schools in Giyani, Galane said there were not enough teachers or pupils to occupy them.
Semaneng Secondary School in Limpopo has a damaged roof
Both pupils and and teachers in rural Limpopo say they are preparing for another year of so-called tree schools, pit toilets, overcrowding in classrooms without roofs and even snake bites, reports Eyewitness News.
The Limpopo province has the highest percentage blacks of all South African provinces, with whites making up less than 1% of the population.
After two years of textbook delays in the troubled province, pupils say they are grateful to have been given their learning material on the first day.
But they admit this is cold comfort without a roof over their heads.
On Wednesday, hundreds of boys queued outside a small concrete barrier housing two tiny holes in the ground, hoping to relieve themselves before their break ended
It was at one of these makeshift toilets at Tsogang Primary School that a young boy was bitten by a venomous snake late last year.
The boy’s teacher says he was lucky to survive, but will no longer go near the pit toilets.
During a similar queuing procession at the Motsipa Secondary School in Bolobedu, a grade 9 pupil told Eyewitness News he often wishes he was born in another province.
“I feel like I can cry…Eish Limpopo”.
The child’s visibly concerned maths teacher later looked up at the cloudy sky and said he was worried about having to cancel lessons, should the rain come down.
“We have no roof and no chance.”
Just a few metres away, his colleague placed a few bent chairs under a tree, where Grade 8s would be given their English lesson.
Tablet prices are plunging amid a flood of new devices and cutthroat competition for market share.
Amazon has slashed prices of its Kindle HD tablets to as low as $169 in the US and 139 pounds in Britain, while Barnes & Noble has cut the price of its Nook to as low as $129, and has announced plans to outsource production of its tablets.
“Since Hewlett-Packard launched its tablet, there has been a lot of pressure on prices,” said Rob Enderle, analyst with Enderle Group.
HP sells its Android-powered seven-inch Slate for as low as $139, helping make the paperback-size tablet computer an affordable commodity.
A Gartner survey suggests tablet sales globally will rise 67.9 percent to 202 million units this year, but analysts say the market is cooling after a couple of years of sizzling growth.
Gartner said the red-hot growth in tablets and smartphones will taper off as these devices gain longer life cycles. The report said many consumers are opting for “basic” tablets to cut costs.
“It looks like the market may be tiring of tablets and as makers get desperate, you may see more pressure on prices,” Enderle said.
Some retailers are selling tablets for less than $100, but Enderle said the flood of poor-quality devices may eventually backfire and turn off consumers.
Jitesh Ubrani, analyst at the research firm IDC, said many of the low-cost tablets come from small, sometimes unbranded “whitebox” vendors.
“The decline of the PC market makes it increasingly important for PC vendors to compete in the tablet space,” Ubrani said
“As more top-tier brands introduce low-cost products, we expect to see a reduction in the number of whitebox vendors.”
Even so, the analyst said, average prices for tablets is likely to drop further, and that tablet shipments are expected to overtake all PC shipments in 2015.”
The market leader, Apple, has so far kept above the fray, keeping prices steady on its iPad line of tablets, although it introduced the lower-cost iPad mini last year at $329, less than the $500 for its full-size iPad.
“Apple does not look at the competitive marketplace to determine its strategy,” said Jeff Orr, analyst with ABI Research. “They look at their buyers. Because of that I would expect their price points to remain consistent for the foreseeable future.”
Enderle said Apple is seeking to remain a “premium vendor” but faces a difficult choice — lowering prices, which can hurt its profits and worsen its share price declines, or giving up market share.
“Under Steve Jobs, when a product started to commoditize, they would come out with something new,” Enderle said. “Apple needs another premium product. It is overdue for whatever the next big thing is.”
Microsoft has also aimed at the high end of the market with its Surface, which debuted with a starting $500 price tag, but it has cut the price as low as $199 for education buyers.
Orr said some of the manufacturers may be forced out of the market if tablets are not part of their “core” business.
“Every brand believes it has an audience which will be interested in their device to connect to their ecosystem,” he said. “The reality is not every player can survive.”
Amazon sells its Kindles near the cost of production, in an effort to direct the buyers to Amazon content and apps. The others, including Apple, Google and Microsoft, also want to keep their customers tethered to an ecosystem for advertising and sales.
But Orr points out “there is none of that brand loyalty that some of these vendors had expected.” For example, an iPad user can still use Google, and Kindle users can buy from non-Amazon sellers.
Enderle noted that Google, which makes a $199 Nexus 7 tablet, “has a subsidized model in which advertising makes up the difference” of any lost profits from the device itself.
But he noted that Barnes & Noble faces an unusual predicament because it is primarily a brick-and-mortar bookseller, and needs to bring customers into its physical stores.
“Every Nook tablet sold causes them to lose a customer who might also go into the store,” he said. “They may need to go fully online and compete with Amazon.”
IDC’s Ubrani said it may be difficult for players like Barnes & Noble to compete with Amazon by subsidizing the tablets.
“Not every tablet vendor can afford to utilize this business model,” he said. “Yes, each can offer movies, music, apps, etc. to help subsidize the tablet, but none have the same scale and product selection that Amazon does.”
Enderle said that even though it seems to be a good time to buy a tablet, he advises people to wait.
“We are just short of a refresh” for many tablet makers, said Enderle. He expects new versions of the iPad, Surface and several Android models. Amazon is also reportedly working on new tablets.
“We will see a raft of new products in August and September,” he said. “Unless you find a really good buy. I would wait.” – AFP
Nadine Gordimer, Nobel laureate for literature in 1991
Nobel literature prize winner Nadine Gordimer poured scorn on South Africa’s education system on Tuesday as “a wreck” over the failure to deliver textbooks to thousands of public schools.
The scandal has caused a national furore after leaving more than 5,000 rural schools without textbooks for more than six months of the academic year in a damning measure of South Africa’s schooling 18 years into democracy.
“Our education system is a wreck. It’s a shamble. I can’t believe that three-quarters of the year have gone by and so many of our schools, especially in the rural areas, have been without textbooks,” said Gordimer, 88, on SAFM public radio news.
“It is the (education) minister’s responsibility to see that the books are ordered in time and delivered. How can you teach people to read if there are no books to read from?”
President Jacob Zuma is facing increasing calls to fire Education Minister Angie Motshekga. On Monday, he said he was waiting for a final report from a team he appointed to investigate the debacle.
The education department was found to have violated students’ rights to education after being taken to court and was ordered to remedy the situation.
But a probe revealed that 22 percent of schools in the northern Limpopo region were still without learning materials earlier this month despite a scramble by authorities to get the missing books to schools.
The criticism by Gordimer, who had several works banned by the apartheid regime, comes after peace laureate Desmond Tutu said democratic icon Nelson Mandela would be reduced to tears if he knew the poor state of public schools.
Education is South Africa’s single biggest budget item, but schools are hobbled by poor management and low standards. – SAPA
Johannesburg – Failure to deliver textbooks to schools in Limpopo has affected exam results in that province, the Sunday Times reported.
According to the paper, 70% of Grade 10 pupils in 25 Limpopo schools failed their June exams.
This amounted to 3174 of 4529 pupils.
Principals told the paper the dire results were likely to be mirrored in the rest of the province.
“Teachers are willing to assist, even over weekends, but we don’t have any money to pay them,” said Henry Raedani of Azwifarwi Secondary School.
“The children have been suffering without books.”
Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga said the media had overplayed the failure to deliver textbooks.
“This question of no teaching for six months is a media story, and now principals are jumping on the bandwagon when they have not done their work,” she was quoted as saying.
Limpopo ANC youth league spokesperson Jacob Lebogo reportedly said both Motshekga and Limpopo MEC for education Dickson Masemola should be removed. – Sapa
It was “unfortunate” that Limpopo pupils did not have textbooks in the first half of the year, the ANC said on Thursday.
“We are saying, it’s very unfortunate,” African National Congress spokesman Jackson Mthembu told SAfm.
“Six months into an education year, kids have no books.”
Mthembu did not want to comment on reports that the education department had again missed a deadline to deliver the textbooks by midnight on Wednesday.
The department was expected to send a report on Thursday morning to civil rights group Section27 with an update on the situation.
The department of basic education was initially ordered in May to provide Limpopo schools with textbooks by June 15.
The High Court in Pretoria in May ruled that the department’s failure to provide textbooks violated the Constitution.
Section 27, which brought the application, met the department after the first deadline expired, and it was decided that delivery of the textbooks should be completed by Wednesday. – SAPA
Human Rights Commissioner Judge Jody Kollapen yesterday handed down judgment in the application launched by the Centre for Applied Legal Studies at Wits University, acting on behalf of SECTION27, Hanyani Thomo Secondary School and Tondani Lydia Masiphephethu, for the delivery of textbooks to schools in Limpopo and the implementation of a catch-up plan for Grade 10 learners.
Kollapen has ordered the Department of Basic Education (DBE) and the Limpopo Department of Education to deliver textbooks to all schools in Limpopo by no later than 15 June 2012.
He further pronounced that the failure by the DBE and the Department to provide textbooks to learners throughout Limpopo for almost half of the academic year is a violation of the right to a basic education.
The respondents have been instructed to formulate a catch-up plan for the schools and that a copy must be submitted to the court and the applicants by 8 June 2012. The catch-up plan must identify gaps in the curricula and the extent to which the quality of teaching and learning has been prejudiced by the lack of textbooks.
The respondents are required to indicate which remedial measures will be put in place to address these problems. Furthermore, they are required to submit monthly reports to the court and the applicants on their compliance with the catch-up plan, which must be concluded by the end of this academic year.
“There are approximately 1.7 million learners at over 5 000 schools in Limpopo who will benefit from the declaratory relief and the order requiring the urgent delivery of textbooks,” says Zeenat Sujee, lawyer at the Wits Centre for Applied Legal Studies (CALS) leading the case.
In addition, Grade 10 learners throughout the province will benefit from the catch-up plan, which will assist them in closing the gaps in their syllabi caused by the late delivery of textbooks.
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