Schools for disabled pupils in Gauteng might be forced to turn children away, close their hostels and end their transport and health services from April, because the provincial education department is set to cut staff funding. The department told support staff at several schools for special needs pupils that they would no longer have jobs after 31 March. This leaves school managements unsure about how their schools will continue to function. Teachers need support staff to help physically handicapped pupils move, use the bathroom and eat.
Several school in Pretoria are affected. New Hope School, which caters for 400 pupils, will lose all 11 of its housemothers and assistants at its hostel. It will have to close the residence, which accommodates 29 disabled pupils. The Transvalia School for epileptics and the disabled will have to close its hostel because 17 of its 33 support staff members are to be retrenched because of the provincial government cutback on funding. It will also lose its nurse, who administers medication to 76 pupils. By law, teachers are not allowed to administer prescription medicines.
Herman Lamprects, chairperson of the school’s governing body, has written to the Gauteng Education Department demanding to be informed on what will happen to the 49 underprivileged learners dependent on the nursing sister to take them to clinics for medication and treatment. The Sonitus School for people with impaired hearing will also lose its nurse. It has already lost four teachers. The Via Nova School for the mentally disabled will lose six of its housemothers.
The CEO of the Federation of Governing Bodies of SA Schools, Paul Colditz, said: “This problem comes up every year, primarily because there are still no norms and standards for [support] staff in this sector.” According to a former head of the Western Cape Department of Education, Mike Wilter, the basic education minister, Angie Motshekga, was responsible for compiling national norms and standards but has failed to do so. Colditz said pupils at special needs schools faced “trauma every year”, as budgets for support staff were slashed, forcing the schools to retrench employees.
The department was supposed to have finalised its allocation of support staff posts in September, but did not. The Gauteng Education Department’s spokesperson, Phumla Sekhonyane, said: “It is incorrect to say the department is cutting support to special needs schools. All public schools are allocated posts according to the number of learners they have.”
She said the number of pupils at these schools had declined. “When the numbers decline, the staff members are not lost to the system. They are rerouted to where the numbers have increased.” She denied that the department was closing the school hostels. Despite the department’s assertion that staff were being reallocated, they had been retrenched.
A New Hope School governing body member said that although the school’s pupil numbers had dropped by only seven – from 411 last year – 16 staff members would lose their jobs. A parent from this school, Sheona Doran, said that without sufficient class assistants, the school could not function.
