According to a recent article in a daily newspaper, “collaboration schools are public schools where organisations collaborate with the education department to provide additional skills and resources.”
“In the case of Zwelethemba High School the SGB decided not to renew the service-level agreement with the [partner],” said Bronagh Hammond, spokesperson of the Western Cape Education Department (WCED).
“The school felt it would be better served by another operator,” she said. “It had approached alternative operators which could not commit their services to the school.”
The WCED confirmed Zwelethemba High School will no longer be a collaboration school after 30 September.
According to the Cape Argus article the Equal Education movement and South African Democratic Teacher’s Union (Sadtu) “lodged a court challenge against the WCED collaboration schools programme” in November 2022.
Zwelethemba High School’s SGB recently met with the ANC’s Western Cape education spokesperson Khalid Sayed to air its grievances and also held a picket in mid-June while “handing over a memorandum to the Cape Winelands District WCED on the issue,” the Cape Argus reported.
According to Hammond the WCED has also received complaints that the school still pays teachers who no longer teaches at the school a salary, with October confirming that “this is allegedly not happening”.
Currently an investigation into the matter is underway which will confirm whether the allegations is true or not.
Hammond explained that the WCED cannot confirm a date of completion of the investigation.
Benefits of collaboration schools
“The collaboration school programme is designed to create an environment with an improved educational experience,” said Hammond in an email to the Standard.
She said a specific partner will partner with a school to provide additional support to the school’s principal and teachers through “training and development programmes”, which improves the quality of teaching and learning.
“Additional resources are made available to the school via donor funding, such as career guidance counsellors and mentors, partnerships with non-governmental organisations promoting the mental health and well-being of learners, resources for remedial education, teacher training, or support for the school’s financial management,” Hammond explained.
Standard reached out to Zwelethemba High School’s SGB on several occasions, but had not received any comment by the time of publication.
