8 May 2025
More than 8,000 schools in SA are overcrowded and R32bn is needed to fix the crisis.
The basic education department revealed this during its briefing to the parliamentary portfolio committee on basic education on Tuesday.
Acting chief director for infrastructure, planning and delivery at the department, Ramasedi Mafoko, said there was still a significant backlog in education infrastructure. However, there is limited capacity to address the problem, he said.
In Limpopo, Ramasedi said, there are 1,620 schools that need additional classrooms, followed by KwaZulu-Natal with 1,495, Gauteng with 1,156 and the Eastern Cape with 1,139.
In addition, the department said it needed R14bn to build additional toilets in 13,485 schools to cope with the rising number of pupils.
KwaZulu-Natal has 3,475 schools that require additional toilets, followed by the Eastern Cape with 2,765 and Limpopo with 2,072.
“We have 8,222 [overcrowded] schools, and it [affects] sanitation. There is a formula that we use in terms of determining the number of toilets for girls, boys and staff and even for disabled learners. But when the number of learners increases, obviously the … sanitation would need to be increased,” Mafoko said.
Sowetan recently reported that the Gauteng education department had revealed that 206 primary school pupils and 79 high school pupils from Diepsloot had not set foot in class this year.
The report said there was overcrowding at schools in the area, with primary schools bearing the brunt of the problem. The report showed that primary schools were overcrowded by 3,002 pupils, while the figure was 1,844 at high schools. The area needs 102 more classrooms to deal with overcrowding.
Source:Sowetan
