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Dysfunctional schools to stay
15/12/2006 15:52 - (SA)
Johannesburg - The education department had no plans to close down dysfunctional schools, director general Duncan Hindle said on Friday.
"There's certainly no plan on the table in that regard," he said.
According to the National Professional Teachers' Organisation of SA (Naptosa) on Friday, Hindle said in a radio interview that the department would consider closing dysfunctional schools as a last resort.
Hindle said he had been reflecting on the Conference of Commonwealth Education Ministers and what other countries had said on the issue in Cape Town this week.
A range of policy options was available on the matter and he was talking about theoretical and hypothetical possibilities, he said.
The department was "not even thinking" about the issue and had no policy on the matter, he said.
Hindle said some schools had historically produced poor matric results which did raise questions about what needed to be done about them.
Many of the schools were the only schools in the area.
"Closing them down is never going to be the answer. You have to make these schools work.
Naptosa said it shared the department's concern about dysfunctional schools. The schools needed to be profiled to determine where problems lay. Assisting schools to fix problems would be more useful rather than closing them down, it said.
"Schools can be dysfunctional for many different reasons," said Sue Muller (SUBS:umlaat on u). "Just closing down a school with getting a profile would be wrong."
However, Hindle said such issues would theoretically be looked at if closing schools was ever considered, but it was "not a real possibility".
"If it was to be a possibility, we would look at those issues. But it's certainly not a policy at this stage," he said.
"Naptosa has nothing to fear."
- SAPA
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