Overcrowding continues to be a major challenge for South African schools, it has even resulted in certain Gauteng schools closing for consecutive days, as concerned parents demand answers.
Last year, education activists, Equal Education (EE) launched a campaign against overcrowding in Gauteng schools.
The #NoSpaceForUs campaign is based on research that the group conducted between September 2019 and June 2020 at nine schools in the Gauteng province.
The research found that over 70% of classes in schools in a Gauteng township which they inspected were overcrowded.
On several occasions the Department of Basic Education have acknowledged the urgency of school overcrowding and that measures need to be put in place to tackle overcrowded schools.
In a recent media statement, Equal Education raised concerns that the Gauteng Education Department (GDE) lack the understanding of what school overcrowding is and how it should be measured and expressed that the GDE will not release key information on exactly how bad overcrowding in classrooms is.
The group voiced that government has primarily used mobile classrooms to try to alleviate school overcrowding.
"Providing hard infrastructure like classrooms is only effective in preventing overcrowding if a school has enough of other related resources, such as teachers, non-teaching staff, and furniture." says EE
Equal Education has requested the GDE to provide information on all overcrowded schools in Gauteng, a report and justification on the percentage of teachers and non-teaching support staff as well as a forward-looking infrastructure development plan.
We urge the GDE to make the requested information available and to meet with us to discuss interventions on overcrowding
To date, the group has not received this information from the department, and hopes that with the recent leadership change within the GDE, the matter of overcrowded classrooms will be taken seriously and addressed urgently.
