All systems go for 2024 school year

It was all systems go as the school year started today.

With most pupils having been placed in a class, the KwaZulu-Natal Department of Education is also confident that academic work will begin almost immediately with all learner materials having been delivered.

“The Department is pleased that the numbers of unplaced learners is not as high as in the previous academic years,” said KZN Department of Education HOD, Mr Nkosinathi Ngcobo.

“We are aware that there may be an influx of parents currently at schools and the Circuit Management Centre (CMC) heads have put systems in place to attend to the people that will come. It must be noted that admissions are for Grade R, 1 and 8. Regarding transfer cases, only cases that are backed by evidence will be attended to,” he added.

Parents whose children still have not secured spaces at schools or late applications, are advised to visit their nearest Circuit Offices for placement.

“For the central procurement of LTSM (learning and teaching support materials), we are happy to report that there is a 100% delivery of LTSM in all the schools in the province.

“The Department allocated funds to S21c schools for the purchase of textbooks and stationery for the 2024 Academic Year. School were requested to give indication of prospective order value and funds were prioritised in terms of the inputs. The Department had ensured that all procurement processes were completed by schools on time. The Department also issued directives for all orders to be placed with school service providers with the expectation that deliveries will be made on time and the Department is satisfied that this was done according to the instruction from Head Office,” said Mr Ngcobo.

He said that schools would also be properly staffed as more than 3000 vacancies which had been advertised (as a result of resignations, deaths, retirement and other reasons), had been filled.

“The placement of successful candidates as per the recommendations of the school governing bodies have been released to districts and successful incumbents, who will assume duty when school re-opens. The department is confident that this will enable schools to be properly staffed when the 2024 school year starts,” said Mr Ngcobo.

He said major focus had been placed on the National School Nutrition Programme and systems had been put into place to ensure the smooth-running of this programme when schools re-open.

He said the 1 747 appointed service providers, who were currently in their second year of contract, were ready to start the supply and delivery of food items to schools from Monday (January 15).

“This will ensure that all schools are able to provide meals to the learners on their first day of school. The Department is working with service providers to ensure that there are sufficient supplies for all the 11 feeding days in January. In addition to providing much needed meals to the learners, the NSNP has also created 16 114 job opportunities comprising 14 868 volunteer food handlers and 1 246 chief food handlers.

“These personnel will be in schools from Monday to make the necessary preparation for the cooking to take place on the first day of school throughout all 5 436 participating schools across all 12 districts. The Department urges all parents and caregivers to send their children to school on Wednesday for teaching and learning to commence without delay,” said Mr Ngcobo.

He said measures hade also been put into place to ensure schools affected by storm and flood damage were operational.

“The ultimate responsibility of the department is to ensure the provision of an environment that is conducive for teaching and learning. Recent storms and floods caused severe damage to school infrastructure, where 59 schools in nine of the 12 districts were affected. The department has put in place various measures to ensure that affected schools are provided with interim measures which includes mobile classrooms, mobile ablution facilities and dislodging of existing ablution facilities,” said Mr Ngcobo.