DA demands answers on unplaced special needs pupils
Picture: Independent Media Picture: Independent Media
Pretoria – Gauteng has 1 785 pupils with special needs who have not been placed in schools, Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga said at the end of last year.
Just under 359 of them came from Tshwane, department spokesperson Oupa Bodibe said.
Bodibe also said the city had 24 special schools, three hospital schools and two special schools operating on Department of Social Development premises, where pupils in their care reside.
With regard to the children still awaiting placements, Bodibe said: “Admission to special schools is a continuous process. The aim is to place a learner who is on a waiting list within two months.”
He said the pupils who were recorded as being out of schools were those still in pre-school waiting to reach the appropriate age for admission.
In Parliament, Motshekga said there were 9606 special needs children not in school across the country.
In Gauteng there 3 902 during the 2013/14 financial year, but that number fell to 3 338 in the 2014/15 period.
The pupils had various disabilities ranging from hearing loss, visual impairment and cerebral palsy to learning disabilities.
There were just under 500 pupils over the age of 19 in Pretoria special needs schools.
The department said 14 were in the Tshwane North district, 152 in Tshwane South and 328 in Tshwane West.
In the 2014/15 financial year, there were 606 “over-aged” pupils in the schools and in the previous year, 608.
Bodibe, addressing the issue of the “over-aged” pupils clogging up schools, said every effort was made to allow special needs pupils to complete their curriculum programme in line with the nature of their needs.
However, an unimpressed DA MP Sonja Boshoff said: “It is utterly unacceptable that thousands of children are denied their right to basic education as enshrined in Section 29 of the constitution. It is even more worrying that the number of children with special needs who are on waiting lists has increased from 9232 in 2013/14 to 9606 in 2015/16.”
She said the DA would write to the chairperson of the portfolio committee, Nomalungelo Gina, to request that Motshekga be summoned to Parliament to explain why the learners were being denied their right to education.
The party would also demand that she present a full plan to urgently remedy the situation. “The DA will make it clear to the minister that no child, no matter his or her disability, should be denied access to education.”