With just two weeks to go before the National Senior Certificate (NSC) examinations, disturbing conditions have emerged at two of Chatsworth’s worst performing schools - Witteklip and Chatsworth Secondary.
This was revealed after the DA’s State of Readiness Tour (SORT) of KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) schools.
The tour, spearheaded by Sakhile Mngadi, the DA KZN spokesperson on education, kicked-off last week in the Umlazi District. It will extend to cover the province’s 12 education districts in an attempt to establish interventions to date by KZN’s Department of Education (DoE) at the worst performing schools in the 2023 matric final exams.
Two of the worst performing schools in the Umlazi district were Witteklip Secondary School with a 47% pass rate and Chatsworth Secondary with a 56.6% pass rate.
The principal of Chatsworth Secondary, Arthur Lukhan, said they currently have 250 pupils from grades eight to 12, with only 31 in matric this year.
“Last year, we had 27 pupils writing their National Senior Certificate exams at our school. The population at the school did not just drop overnight. It has gradually declined over the years due to social factors such as the reduction in family sizes. There are also many other schools in the area, so parents have options and the image of the school has been tainted because of its location,” he said.
He added that when he became the principal in 2017, they had a pass rate of more than 70%.
“I was able to keep flying the flag high because I had a group of dedicated teachers, who worked through the holidays and even after hours to ensure pupils were well prepared for the exams,” he said.
Lukhan said the low pass rate in 2023 was not due to any lack of effort from the school and its staff.
Aamena Khan, the chairperson of the school governing body (SGB), attributed the poor performance to challenges faced by the school because of the crime rate in the area.
“We have an ongoing issue where ‘sugar boys’ get onto the school premises and steal copper pipes, electrical wires or anything they can get their hands on. The school currently only has electricity in the admin block, so the classrooms are dull on overcast days and that makes learning more difficult. During the recent school holidays, the staff room was broken into and they stole everything, including the conference table, sink and refrigerator. Now the staff have nowhere to sit during their free periods. The state of the school is really bad. All the aluminium window panes have been stolen.”
Khan added that many of their pupils came from the informal settlements.
“They cannot pay the school fees and this has led to the school having less funds to purchase new materials. Most of the parents are also retail or factory workers and cannot make it to meetings due to work commitments.
“Pupils also cannot afford extra taxi fare, so this has made having extra classes difficult. Some of the teachers assist in transporting the children just so they do not miss out,” she said.
Khan added that these issues contributed to the school not performing well in 2023 as compared to the previous years.
The principal of Witteklip Secondary was unable to comment or provide the contact information for the SGB spokesperson.
Vee Gani, the chairperson of the parents association in KZN, said he had been working with these schools for years and attributed the low pass rate to several factors.
“At Witteklip Secondary and many other schools, there is low parent involvement, which is why the pupils are not interested. Another major issue is that these schools have failing infrastructure as they were built many years ago and have to be maintained.”
He added that the schools could have as many intervention programmes as they wanted but the environment needed to be conducive for proper learning to take place.
They need to be given the resources they need to function by the department, he said.
“If they are not provided with enough teachers, they are compelled to fill governing body posts where the candidates are not the most qualified and this impacts learning. Schools have many issues such as poor infrastructure, poor resources and this has left them vulnerable to produce these poor results. How do you deliver quality education under such circumstances?
“Education is the cornerstone of everything in society so it needs to be invested in. The Department of Education needs to be more involved and implement consequence management for any form of corruption within the education system. Finally, schools need to be made safer, like any company that hires security guards for staff to be safe, the state needs to also ensure that their workers are protected,” he added.