Picket outside Cape Education MEC’s house

Activists picketed outside Western Cape Education MEC Debbie Schäfer's home demanding her response to a recent social audit of 244 schools.

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Cape Town - Members of advocacy group Equal Education showed up outside Education MEC Debbie Schäfer’s Bergvliet home on Thursday morning to demand that she respond to a recent social audit of 244 schools.

Schäfer was not impressed when the scores of pupils, some sitting under blankets, arrived at her home and she took to Twitter to respond.

In one tweet she wrote: “I won’t accept things on an illegal March to private home that you have not given me at my office (sic).”

Western Cape Premier Helen Zille also weighed in and in a tweet, wrote: I firmly believe that @equal_education has done nothing about the CORE problems in education except exacerbate them.”

Equal Education’s Western Cape head, Nishal Robb, said it had been more than two months since the findings of the audit were presented to district officials but there had been no response. He said the department’s response had ranged from saying they had never received it to “rubbishing the methodology”.

Robb said that before this morning’s visit to the MEC’s house the group had tweeted her about the audit several times.

In April the Cape Argus reported on the findings of the audit, which showed, among other things, that many of the participants were experiencing corporal punishment at school and that several of the schools had been vandalised in the last year.

Schäfer’s spokeswoman Jessica Shelver said the information that had been provided “were loose sheets”.

She said the ministry had continuously requested the full report of the “social audit” from EE but had not received this.

“The fact they did not send the full social audit to the MEC’s office, that they didn’t request a meeting, that they did not protest outside of the MEC or WCED head office, and instead chose to protest outside her private residence is simply grandstanding at best.”

Robb denied that “loose papers” had been handed over and said a CD had been given to officials.

ilse.fredericks@inl.co.za

Cape Argus