Gauteng schools to remain open despite rising infections

THIS week, the Gauteng Education Department (GDE) was forced to tone down on its call to have the schools opened to full capacity as the province has seen record Covid-19 infection rates among learners, educators and support staff in the past few weeks.

Presenting his R53.4 billion, budget speech at the provincial legislature on Thursday, GDE MEC Panyaza Lesufi said the third wave was causing immeasurable panic and misery in schools.

“To date, we have closed 20 schools due to reported Covid cases. This year alone 1077 educators tested positive and the number of learners who tested positive was almost double that (1977),” said Lesufi.

In the past few weeks, Lesufi was at the forefront in calling for the schools to open to full capacity, but due to the increase in infections in this third wave, he seems to have toned down his call saying: “We are monitoring the situation and await guidance and advice from our health experts. We remain open-minded in taking whatever action that will assist to minimise the infections in our schools. We are, however, pleased that the National Department of Health, jointly with the National Department of Basic Education, have resolved to vaccinate our educators and staff as early as next month.”

GDE spokesperson Steve Mabona also added: “As the Gauteng Department of Education, we wish to first state that we are quite concerned at the rising numbers of Covid-19 cases being reported throughout the province.

“That being said, we are confident that the decision to have all primary school learners back towards the end of July 2021 was taken based on sound scientifically backed data.”

Mabona said since February, to date, 4706 cases have been reported of which 2 857 learners and 1 509 educators and the rest being support staff.

But yesterday, Minister of Basic Education Angie Motshekga said schools will remain open and the Cabinet has approved and supported the proposal by the sector, to prepare for the return of traditional time-tabling at primary school level with effect from the first day of the third school term.

Meanwhile, the South African Democratic Teachers’ Union spokesperson Nomusa Cembi said the rising number of cases was quite concerning. “The rising number of cases is quite concerning. The department indicated that the opening of schools would take place on 26 July. We hope that by then, we would be on a different wave of the number of cases would have gone down.

“We would like to see the department taking all the necessary steps such as ensuring social distancing in order for everyone in school to be safe,” said Cembi.

Cembi said they welcome the government’s recent announcement that the education sector will be the next group of people to be vaccinated.

“We welcome this as we have long been calling for teachers to be prioritised. We hope the Department will achieve its target to have teachers vaccinated over 10 days,” said Cembi.

Education activist Hendrick Makaneta said opening schools during the peak of the virus was a dangerous thing to do as many teachers and learners will be affected negatively. Where Covid cases are detected, the schools should be closed immediately in order to save lives.

Makaneta said the government was moving very slowly when it came to the issue of vaccinating education practitioners.

“Government must find a way to speed up the process and vaccinate as many teachers as possible before it is too late,” said Makaneta.

Executive director for the National Professional Teachers Organisation of South Africa Basil Manuel said even though they were worried about the increased number of infections, they were not calling for the summary closure of schools.