Article source: www.pbpr.co.za

The current large-scale push by the National Department of Basic Education (DBE) to close farm schools in rural areas can lead to a wide-ranging social disaster that will see many children from rural homes displaced from their families to grow up in government facilities with no family structure to support them in their formative years.

According to African Christian Democratic Party (ACDP) MP Marie Sukers, the DBE plans to close 3000 rural schools in the next few years, with 1300 being targeted in the Eastern Cape alone. “Most closures are slated to take place in the predominantly rural Limpopo, Mpumalanga, North-West and Eastern Cape. But the impact is not limited to these provinces, the Western Cape is planning to close anything between 150 and 200 schools. Countrywide, this impacts in the region of 200 000 learners,” says Sukers.

She says the main reason given for closing these schools is that they are too small to be economically viable and that larger schools provide better education. “This would appear to be reasonable, but the DBE has no research that proves an economic benefit, more importantly, there is no research on the social impact this policy will have on children being displaced from their homes to grow up in government hostels. 

“The question the DBE should be asking is what is this doing to children and to communities? To find an answer, we need to just look at history. This concept of removing children from their families, and the State playing parent has been done before. Children of First Nation communities have been taken forcefully in the name of education from their parents and into hostels for education in the 1800’s, with devastating effect on the psychological development of the child. In a country that hovers over the brink of social collapse, everything must be done to strengthen families.

“I am concerned that the creation of the ‘mega school’ concept, wherein children from farming communities are being displaced from their roots, to become hostel dwellers in townships, is similar to the practice in the 50’s and 60’s where children were taken forcefully to be westernised and alienated from their cultural identity with devastating results. A democratic government cannot enforce its under-developed policies on parents whereby the State becomes the pseudo parent! Tens of millions of rands of investment that have gone into rural school infrastructure is going to waste. It is incredibly sad to see these well-built schools standing empty in our rural communities,” says Sukers.

She says the closure of rural schools represents a massive waste of capital. “After 1994 significant investments were made to upgrade rural schools and open libraries, laboratories, and upgrade school buildings. These are now deserted. There is no evidence that the current approach will not lead to similar waste in the future. Learner transport is offered as a universal panacea for school closure, but no long-term budgeting models appear to have been developed to examine the long-term sustainability of the approach.

“These issues should be addressed in a policy on rural education. In 2017 a draft Rural Education Policy was published for public comment but was never finalised. One reason for the five-year delay may be that since 2015 the Cabinet has directed that all laws, policies, and regulations issued by the government need to be supported by a comprehensive socio-economic impact assessment. A socio-economic assessment did not accompany the publication of the draft policy and no work appears to have been done on one since then. Without research a proper socio-economic impact assessment cannot be completed.

“Not only does the DBE have a single report in its research repository that addresses these issues, but it also doesn’t plan to do any research into the subject either. Not a single topic identified for research in the DBE’s Research Agenda 2019-2023 focuses on the impact of school closures or the impact in rural areas and the displacement of children from rural communities,” says Sukers.

“We must ask ourselves what alienation from parents and community will do to the overall development of a child into a well-balanced adult. And what the current under-developed and poorly researched strategy of closing so called non-viable schools indiscriminately will mean for the sustainable growth and future of our rural communities,” says Sukers. 

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Date published: 25/08/2022Feature image: Image for illustrative purposes only. unsplash.com

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