2 SIMULTANEOUS LESSONS, 1 CLASSROOM

NHLANGANO - Teachers and pupils of Mozane Primary School are going through a tough time.

The pupils share classrooms while teachers have no office to prepare prior to resuming lessons or even keep schoolwork. Mozane Primary School is in the southern part of the Shiselweni Region, towards Mashobeni. The school has 74 pupils and eight teachers. It only has five classrooms yet it has Grade I to VII. This has forced Grade I and II pupils to share one classroom as well grades III and IV sharing another. This means they usually have two lessons going on simultaneously in one classroom. When the school was visited, it was noted that the teachers had to speak at the same time, making it hard for the pupils to concentrate, as they hear everything taught by the other teacher.

Offices

The classrooms are also in a dilapidated state. The teachers also use the classrooms as their offices. The school has one staff, house which was turned into the head teacher’s office.
The Head teacher, Simanga Ndlangamandla, said he was having a hard time running the school. He stated that he depended on the free primary education (FPE) grants of the 74 pupils to manage the school. He stated that he could not procure a lot of equipment with the money he had for running the school hence a lot of things were falling apart. He stated that they reported the challenges to the Shiselweni Regional Education Office (REO) and were promised that inspectors would be dispatched to the school. According to the head teacher, even the current classrooms had leaks as the roofing was old, resulting in them moving around the pupils every time it rained.  He said his wish was for the school to have proper classrooms and teachers’ quarters.

Operate

It was gathered that for a school to operate, it has to have at least one teacher’s quarters, which was, however, turned into an office at Mozane. The issues faced by the school are much against sustainable development goal (SDG) three, which speaks to equal access to quality education. The goal states that there needs to be ensured inclusive equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all. The equitable part of the education in the school is currently not met by government as expected. As such, some community members shared that they preferred to use the little money they had and take their children to far away schools to get a better education. Shiselweni REO Siboniso Gumbi said he was aware of the situation at the school and had reported it to the planning unit in the Ministry of Education and Training. He stated that they would look at how the school could be assisted. According to Gumbi, the planning unit was supposed to assess the situation and then approach Micro-projects with proper details of what was needed.

Assisted

“It is true, the school is indeed in a very bad state,” he said. When asked if the school was assisted financially, given the number of pupils and the finances they received through the FPE grants, Gumbi responded to the negative.  He said they had a challenge of a smaller number of inspectors who normally visited schools, hence they did not know about the school as it was not visited. He further said the head teachers also did not report the difficulties they faced, adding that they just accepted the situation they were faced with. This, he said was not supposed to happen as they had to report. The REO Gumbi said government was always ready to assist, adding that there was a unit specifically for that. The REO confirmed that every school was supposed to have a teacher’s house which was unfortunate for Mozane as it was used as an office. He said the head teacher did not report the difficulties to the REO.

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