Fifteen years after the launch of Schooling 2025 Vision, school infrastructure promises remain unfulfilled

10 Dec 2024

There are still thousands of schools and even more learners in South Africa attending schools without basic facilities or sufficient facilities. It is important to remember that multiple programmes and initiatives have had deadlines that have come and gone without achieving their targets.

The year 2025 marks 15 years since the Department of Basic Education launched its Schooling 2025 Vision, and 14 years since the Accelerated School Infrastructure Delivery Initiative was introduced. The vision was intended to be a transformative plan for improving school infrastructure across South Africa. It had several clear objectives, including ensuring that all schools, particularly those in historically disadvantaged communities, had access to basic facilities such as water, sanitation, and electricity by 2025.

The Accelerated School Infrastructure Delivery Initiative was developed to implement this vision. As we approach 2025, it is important to assess the progress on the basic facility-related promises made by the Department of Basic Education and to unpack a recurring scapegoat for the vision not entirely coming to fruition — implementing agents are the “middle men” hired by the department and provincial education departments to oversee school infrastructure projects; they hire contractors to implement these projects. Over the years, Equal Education has outlined that the Department of Basic Education and provincial education departments, while not capacitated to implement infrastructure projects themselves, continue to:

Overwork implementing agents.

Fail to hold implementing agents accountable.

Allow implementing agents to appoint contractors that have failed to deliver or underperformed on multiple occasions.

With a little over a month until 2025, there are still thousands of schools and even more learners in South Africa attending schools without basic facilities or sufficient facilities. It is important to remember that multiple programmes and initiatives have had deadlines that have come and gone without achieving their targets.

For instance, the Accelerated School Infrastructure Delivery Initiative programme was established in 2011 to deliver on all its targets (including the eradication and replacement of inappropriate schools) in three years. It’s been more than 13 years and the programme still has not met all its targets. This is despite the continued underspending of the School Infrastructure Backlog Grant. A minister’s reply on 2 January 2024 showed that the Accelerated School Infrastructure Delivery Initiative has successfully replaced 330 schools made of inappropriate materials, improved sanitation at 1,298 schools, and provided 1,224 schools with water and 373 schools with electricity since its launch more than a decade ago.

This leaves a backlog of 16 schools still waiting for various infrastructure interventions. A learner attending these schools could have started Grade R and completed their schooling without ever having seen change. The Sanitation Appropriate For Education programme established in 2018 and also funded under the School Infrastructure Backlog Grant is no different — to date only 3,145 of the 3,375 schools under this programme have received appropriate sanitation. Issues with implementing agents have been repeatedly cited as the reason for the snail-paced delivery of these programmes.

Even with the repeated references to challenges with implementing agents and contractors in annual reports, the Department of Basic Education and provincial education departments have repeatedly failed to create mechanisms to hold these stakeholders accountable and to ensure that targets and deadlines are met. As part of its yearly school visits, Equal Education visited 11 schools in Nquthu, KwaZulu Natal, in the Umzinyathi District Municipality in July, and 12 schools in the Eastern Cape in the Amathole District Municipality in November. While numerous schools were in the process of receiving infrastructure upgrades, a grim reality exists in some of these schools.

Troubling example

A troubling example is Maceba Secondary School in Nquthu, where toilets built in 2021 still need to be handed over; an inspector found an issue after construction, however it is unclear what it was or why the toilets were not opened. At Hlubi High School, toilets constructed just past year have multiple broken doors, and a sink on the floor in one of the girls’ toilets that is said to have been left there by contractors. While contractors are barely held accountable, school communities are left to deal with the consequences of unfinished projects, or projects that have not been constructed to appropriate standards.

Where is the disconnect? Why is the Accelerated School Infrastructure Delivery Initiative, a well-intentioned initiative, marred by inefficiency, delays, and a lack of accountability? We are dealing with a government, or more specifically a department, that allows contractors and implementing agents to fall short of their obligations without any consequences, which ultimately undermines the effectiveness of the entire programme. The Department of Basic Education’s failure to meet the Accelerated School Infrastructure Delivery Initiative’s objectives reflects a worrying trend of unfulfilled commitments and incomplete projects.

While the Department of Basic Education prides itself in having only 266 schools that use plain pit latrines as their primary sanitation, it is incredibly frustrating that they constantly need to be reminded that the learners at these schools are not just numbers and that the risks attached to using unsafe and illegal pit latrines is significant. This is a violation and disregard of learners’ immediately realisable right to quality education and human dignity, as enshrined in the Constitution.

Therefore, it is not enough to have objectives on paper, there is a need for real accountability and decisive action to ensure that all schools, particularly those in marginalised communities, have the facilities that they need. In October 2018, Equal Education released a research report titled Implementing Agents: The Middlemen in Charge of Building Schools that identified key recommendations that would enable implementing agents to successfully fulfil their role using the Infrastructure Delivery Management System and Standard for Infrastructure Procurement and Delivery Management frameworks, and managing school construction projects. These enablers include:

Good governance and institutional capacity.

Legal and regulatory frameworks.

Project monitoring systems.

Enforceable oversight mechanisms.

Although some aspects of these enablers are somewhat incorporated into the Department of Basic Education, provincial education departments and implementing agent working relationships, the persistent challenges with slow, sub-standards or no delivery highlight that not nearly enough is being done. It is important that information about contractors and implementing agents assigned to school projects, timelines for construction and building plans be available to schools and the general public. For bigger infrastructure projects there should be a steering committee established at schools that incorporates various stakeholders and school staff to monitor the progress of the project.

This steering committee should be empowered to do this monitoring and have clear reporting procedures. These committees are essential in helping school communities hold implementing agents, contractors and the government accountable. Finally, where contractors or implementing agents underperform, the government should be blacklisting them. The Draft Public Procurement Bill is an opportunity to fix some of these problems, but the government is continuing to stall on getting this important law finalised. DM

Mbali Twala is a black woman and junior organiser at Equal Education, she is passionate about exploring the intersections of gender, education policy and social transformation. Kgaogelo Matlatle is a black rural queer woman, deeply invested in narrative justice and advocating for climate, gender and education justice. Her politics are grounded in intersectional ecofeminism. She is a Community Leader at Equal Education.

Categories:

Tags:

DM is much better if you are signed in...

South Africa

Troubling example