EE tackles school late-coming
Equal Education aims to encourage learners and staff to arrive punctually for school every day.
KwaThema – Equal Education (EE) took to the streets recently to combat late-coming in schools.
EE is a national movement of learners, teachers and community members working for equality and quality in South African schools through research and youth mobilisation.
“Our high school learners, referred to as ‘equalisers’, conduct school-based campaigns throughout the country focusing on issues facing their peers,” explains EE community leader Sibusiso Mazibuko.
“They do this with the support of volunteer post-secondary youth, termed ‘facilitators’.”
The movement is currently active in 19 schools in KwaThema, Tsakane and Duduza.
“Our equalisers in each of these areas have spent the past month running their school-based campaigns around the issue of late-coming for both learners and staff.”
About 200 equalisers, facilitators and community members gathered at Kwa-Thema Skills School recently for a dialogue on late-coming.
The event started with an area walk-about to mobilise more people from the community.
A significant portion of the event was then dedicated to creating strategies to solve the issue of late-coming.
“Several of our equalisers and facilitators gave testimonials about the negative and long-lasting effects of chronic late-coming,” Mazibuko says.
Community members also voiced the importance of taking a collective approach to the problem.
Thandi Magwaza, an EE parent volunteer, said the community must work together to address the issue and convince learners of the importance of education.
EE equaliser Queeneth Zwane said parents “should stop asking us to take our younger siblings to crèche in the morning, we end up running late to school.”
