Cape Town – Learners at Bungu Junior Secondary School in Libode, outside Mthatha in the Eastern Cape, used to spend a lot of time cleaning their classrooms, which were made from mud.
Coupled with a lack of facilities like furniture, sanitation and learner material, this affected the concentration levels of learners at the school, which ultimately impacted their learning experience. But this has changed for the better.
Lennox Bana, the school principal, says the R24 million facelift for Bungu, which was established in 1959, has impacted positively on learning.
“We used to have temporary structures previously in the form of mud but currently, we have permanent structures.
“Temporary structures consumed time that would be used for the teaching of learners because learners used to clean. It was not easy for them to concentrate fully on their classes because they had to clean the mud structures,” Bana said.
He said this shortly after Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga handed over the newly-built school on Thursday morning.
Bungu Junior Secondary School is one of 170 schools completed nationally as part of the Accelerated Schools Infrastructure Delivery Initiative (ASIDI) programme since inception. The R24-million school is an institution of learning to 392 learners.
It boasts a computer lab, 11 classrooms, a Grade R centre, science laboratory, resource centre as well as a multipurpose centre and nutrition centre where the school serves learners with meals daily.
“As government we say we are a government at work, and this is part of what we call ASIDI. It is a national programme through which the President wanted us to eradicate all mud schools in the country.
“In the Eastern Cape, we have already built more than 132 schools. We are going to have 200 schools built here in the Eastern Cape. Bungu was built in 1959, a full mud school built by the community. We [demolished] all the classes and gave them a state-of-the-art school. It has everything – sanitation, all learning areas, a lab, library, sporting facilities, ECD centre and a nutrition centre,” Minister Motshekga said.
The Minister said the school has all the basic things that are required for it to be functional.
“We are opening with pride one of the schools that the President had called on us to come and build as part of eradicating mud schools,” she said.
She said an instruction has been sent out to ensure that every school has basic sanitation, water and electricity.
In addition to the provision of complete school infrastructure, the ASIDI programme has provided water to 615 schools, sanitation to 425 schools as well as electricity to 307 schools that previously had none, the Minister said.
“I am also excited with the last report I got. Basic sanitation, which was meant to be a five-year programme, has been reduced to a three-year programme. So the programme is now moving even faster than we had anticipated as government.”
Ndibulele Mbodla, a 14-year-old grade 7 learner, said she was happy that with new facilities like the computer and science labs, as she would get to apply what she has learnt from science textbooks practically. – SAnews.gov.za
