EDUCATION WOES
What lessons does Mexico offer SA on maximising classrooms?
Mexico has an effective way of squeezing the most out of its schooling infrastructure
During former finance minister Pravin Gordhan’s 2017 budget speech, he said: "Working with the Department of Basic Education on cost-effective standards for building design, we have reduced the average cost of new schools from R70m for 7,500m² to R34m." That is a considerable saving. But consider just how dramatic SA’s school backlog is and how many R34m schools need building; perhaps the scale of the task at hand begs for a new approach. During a speech on Youth Day in 2016, President Jacob Zuma claimed that 795 schools had been built since 2009 (although Africa Check put the figure at 722). Still, at R34m a pop — if not more — and given the time frames involved in building a new school, it is hardly surprising that demand is outstripping supply. In a 2014 document, the Gauteng education department said that by 2020, it expected to be short of 1,373 classrooms. In 2015, the KwaZulu-Natal education department was quoted in The Mercury newspaper as saying it needed almost 6,000 more ...
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