With the winter school holidays having ended, pupils return to their classrooms, well prepared, to begin the third term of the schooling year. The Western Cape Education Department’s Ministerial spokesperson, Jessica Shelver says much has been done for learners from both primary and secondary schools to prepare them for the gruelling semester. Over the winter holiday period, the department’s safer schools campaign targeted schools in hostile environments to keep pupils out of mischief and provided them with educational and entertaining content.

“Thousands of learners and educators took part in successful winter schools and educated training programmes across the Western Cape. Our biggest success of the holiday programme is that our grade twelve programme was very well attendance. Thousands of them flocked from across the province to attend these holiday programmes,” Shelver explained.

Every school holiday period, the department launches the holiday programme to keep the kids off the streets. Matriculants however, receive support high enrolment subjects such as Life Sciences, Maths, Science, Geography, Accounting and Economics to prepare them for the NEC examinations.

“The Minister visited the Elsies River Primary School during the holidays where a very successful programme was rolled out for learners from schools in the area.

“We run two different programmes, one that is educational and covers important topics such as peer pressure, moral values, substance abuse, HIV/Aids and sexual abuse. Each district organises a programme according to the need of the pupils in the area. We also arrange an array of fun activities from dancing to hiking.

At the end of each holiday period, many schools on the Cape flats fell victim to burglary and vandalism. The department has identified a need to increase security visibility at various schools were these incidents occur. Shelver said for this holiday period, all its schools had an alarm system installed and had more security personnel on the premises. However, Shelver added the security measures do not always act as a deterrent.

“Burglary and vandalism at our schools in the Western Cape has reached epic proportions. We are doing everything possible to protect our schools. We have appointed security guards on our schools for 20 hours during the day and 12 hours during the night. We’ve identified high risk schools in high ricks areas that have been plagued by gangsterism and violence,” Shelver continued.

The latest statistics on schools affected by burglaries and vandalism will be released on Wednesday. The department is currently in the process of ascertaining the degree of damages at schools and whether or not their efforts to prevent incidents of vandalism generated positive results. VOC (Ra’eesah Isaacs)