Eastern Cape – The scholar transport funding in the Eastern Cape has disrupted plans of schools rationalisation by the provincial department of education.
Eastern Cape Education MEC Fundile Gade said the province is ready to resume schooling from the 19 of January but some schools that were due for closure as a result of school rationalisation will remain operational.
The Eastern Cape Department of Education plans to close more than 2000 of schools it has described as unviable in the next three years.
The department plan was to utilise scholar transport to ferry learners who had been attending schools that would cease to operate to nearer schools.
But due to the impact of Covid-19 which affected the education budget, the Eastern Cape has reduced the number of learners eligible for scholar transport from 124 000 to 103 000.
Gade said the impact of this will also affect the rationalisation process as the department cannot close schools and leave learners stranded.
The scholar transport issue has had its challenges that at times pitted the Eastern Cape Department of Education with the Eastern Cape Department of Transport, which is an implementing agency of its education counterpart.
Two audit reports that were conducted independently by Ernst and Young and another one by the Auditor General respectively found instances of over and under payments to operators.
The two reports cited poor insufficient internal controls.
Early this week, the Eastern Cape Transport MEC Weziwe Tikana-Gxotiwe said her department will undertake a third report to conduct a proper review of the other two audit reports to deepen her department’s understanding of challenges and improve the system.
Gade also cited poor internal control in monitoring the service.
He said the two departments are talking to each other on how best to improve the service.
Gade said: “We have had a session with the Department of Transport and we were trying to theorise how best we can manage this shared function.
The shared functions in government will forever create some problems and less accountability. We agreed to use the data provided by the SA Sums because it is the only credible data.”
He said his department also received 2000 bicycles from its transport counterpart to give learners from schools that do not have access routes.
For more education news from Sunday World, click here.
Follow @SundayWorldZA on Twitter and @sundayworldza on Instagram, or like our Facebook Page, Sunday World, by clicking here for the latest breaking news in South Africa. To Subscribe to Sunday World, click here.
