Africa-Press – Eswatini. The ministry of education and training has confirmed that the opening of schools for the 2024 academic year is today.
Minister of education and training Owen Nxumalo said schools would open today as scheduled by the government calendar.
The minister was making clarity on the issue after Swaziland National Association of Teachers (SNAT) and the Eswatini Schools Committee and Parents Association (ESCAPA) called for the schools opening to be postponed.
Nxumalo said schools were opening today regardless of the demands that SNAT wanted to be addressed before government can open schools.
“We expect every pupil to be at school today because food and stationery have been delivered in most of the schools.
We also have people on the ground assessing the situation in the schools that were affected by the storms, which shows that we are ready to open,” he said.
He said the ministry was doing all they could to fix the schools and that cannot be used as a hindrance to open schools.
He added that the different ministries would visit the affected schools this week to monitor their progress.
“We thank government for doing everything they could to make sure that micro project fixes this situation before schools open,” said Nxumalo.
He said the delegation would also be looking at challenges that led to the underperformance of some schools in their Form 3 and Grade V11 examinations.
“They will be led by the Deputy prime minister, who will monitor the progress of schools like Maphiveni Primary school.
We will also visit the schools which did not perform well in their external examinations to check if lack of resources contributed to them underperforming,” he said.
Principal secretary in the ministry Bheki Gama said as far as he was concerned schools were opening today. He said no one had the power to stop schools from opening if he had not closed them.
“People who are not responsible for taking care of the schools and paying teachers cannot tell us what to do,” said Gama.
Gama also added that they cannot be able to observe and attend to some of the challenges when the pupils are not at school.
He said if they can work towards solving every problem before schools open, they can close them forever. Director of Education Ntfombilenhle Dlamini also added that parents were expecting schools to open today.
Dlamini said the ministry could not address the challenges at once and when schools are closed.
“It is painful to witness the situation when schools remain closed. We have suffered a lot during the COVID-19 pandemic era and the cohort that was produced from that is one complicated group, which is what is concerning to parents,” he said.
ESCAPA Deputy President Sisana Mamba said there was nothing that they could do now because the ministry has confirmed that schools are opening today.
“We still feel like schools opening should have been postponed to a later date because the basic resources are still not there in some schools.
We want our children to receive quality education so that they can also perform and compete in other countries,” she said.
SNAT secretary general Lot Vilakati said they were now somehow in agreement with the ministry in opening schools today.
He said the ministry has delivered stationery in schools, but were still waiting for food to be delivered.
“They have also released posting letters for teachers who had expired contracts and this gives us hope,” he said.
Nhlanganiso Gumbi, a Form 1 pupil at Mbabane Central, said he was happy that schools were opening today.
He said he was visiting his paternal homestead for the weekend and returned to her mother’s flat as he knew that schools were opening.
“I am relieved that schools are opening after such long holidays. I was starting to forget some of the things I learnt last year,” he said.
Celinhlanhla Hlophe also stated that she was happy to be going to school tomorrow.
She said she was looking forward to her Form 3 class and spending time with her friends.
“My friends are the only thing that I missed about school and this year I have to commit myself to my studies, as this it is going to be a long year for me but I am happy that we are finally opening,” she said.
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