Cape Town – On a day more than 1.1 million pupils started school in the Western Cape, including 108 325 Grade 1s, a group of disenchanted parents, teachers and community activists picketed outside the Bergville Primary School in Bishop Lavis to highlight their dissatisfaction with a "disproportional" learner-to-teacher ratio and overcrowding.
They claim the high drop-out rate is due to there being only one teacher for every 70 pupils, which has been dismissed by the Western Cape Education Department (WCED).
After the memorandum of grievances and demands was handed over to a WCED representative, schooling resumed.
WCED officials have met the leadership of Bergville Primary School to discuss the various concerns raised by residents of the area, the SABC reported.
Community spokesperson Victor Altensteadt has taken umbrage with the WCED's stance on the issue, saying: “The Western Cape Education Department should not lie because what has also happened was that the principal of this school has written to them on numerous occasions asking for more staff support, more teachers, an additional janitor and asking for law enforcement to be stationed outside of the school.
"Our schools are being vandalised and all those type of things. It’s only on Monday when they heard about this planned action that they wanted to meet with us.”
Principal Aleem Abrahams has admitted there are challenges, Eyewitness News reported.
"At the moment, we have a situation where we have, in some classes, 72 learners in a classroom that has been built for 30 learners.
"In terms of quality education, it will never happen at this school because quality teaching and quality learning cannot take place where you have 70 learners in one classroom," Abrahams said.