Our responsibility to ensure children have quality school infrastructure is not debatable

The failure by the department of basic education (DBE) to fully roll out the Minimum Norms and Standards for School Infrastructure undermines learners’ rights to quality education and learning environment. It undercuts the sacrosanctity of education and replicates a “heritage of inequality” post-apartheid democracy.

It bequeaths schools a negative tag of being “wretched” and “unaccountable”, for failing to uphold the rights of pupils and provision of habitable schooling environments. Progress made on school infrastructure is promising, but cannot be celebrated given the few deaths of pupils falling into pit toilets.

In his inaugural speech, President Cyril Ramaphosa implored that “It is our shared will and our shared responsibility to build a society that knows neither privilege nor disadvantage”.

We have not done enough to modernise school infrastructure as a social justice obligation. Pit toilets still shame the dignity of our children despite the 27-year rhetoric to eliminate them. Providing schools with running water and state-of-the-art infrastructure remains a distant mirage.

Not only are we complicit in perpetuating social injustice, we have not demonstrated new approaches to the national challenge. A practice quite asymmetrical to the African proverb, namely “If a tiny toe is hurting, the whole body bends to tend it”, we failed to “tend” to the schooling environment. We equally failed to preserve pupils' right to dignity and access to dignified school ablutions.

In the words of the American educationist, William Ayers, we have not excelled as “models of thoughtfulness and care; exemplars of problem-solving and decision-making” by declaring rehabilitation of school infrastructure as non-negotiable. Our lacklustre approaches undermine the very principles and values of the DBE, namely, to create profitable alignments of “people, excellence, teamwork, learning and innovation”.

We failed to bring innovative ways to eliminate pit toilets. Access remains SA’s post-democracy challenge across all forms of schooling endeavours. We have been slow to mitigate it despite the sad loss of young lives. Entrusting infrastructure projects to trusted, competent and accountable teams can improve service delivery and gradually improve community-school confidence and commitment for change and transformation of schools.

There are no blueprints to address these challenges; however, the after could substantially improve the situation:

Revisit the expansive policy of the Minimum Norms and Standards for School Infrastructure by reframing policy foresight and mapping out national and provincial infrastructural trends. Reformulate purposes and align existing national and provincial capabilities to attain set targets per infrastructure schedulers.
Robust planning for performance analysis and advice. Accelerating projects requires meticulous planning and identification of performance indicators, including regular evaluation and monitoring systems. Having efficient business processes and systems that provide lucid informatics about projects and completions are critical to meeting targets and adjusting delivery modes.
Creating a multi-stakeholder approach and commitment to accelerate the rollout of infrastructure allows for mitigation against competing demands on National Treasury for funding.
Reframing stakeholder partnerships and processes to leverage skills, funding and common vision to attain targets. Partnerships that espouse diversity and commitment to change and transformation have the influence and affect to achieve the set targets. It also broadens the department’s footprints for school infrastructure delivery. Through partnership networks, co-learning and sharing of project management skills and competences are put to practice. Through these robust interactions, the modalities to roll out the infrastructure get refined to meet targets.
Reframing stakeholder engagement strategy. Paucity of policy details and briefs on engagement strategy on school infrastructure can create uncertainty about the gains made. Deploying efficient stakeholder engagement systems demystify the technocratic approach to policy implementation.

Better communication emboldens progress and isolates areas of challenge. It also locates the community as co-owners of school projects with a common objective, making schools habitable and compliant to human rights virtues.

Ramaphosa concluded his address by stating “We must be a society that values excellence, rewards effort and hard work and rejects mediocrity”. Let it be our solemn commitment to reward our children with state-of-the-art school infrastructure, so they can breach knowledge boundaries without any impediments. It is their right to access quality infrastructure.