Equal Education members rally against educational inequality

Over 2000 Equal Education (EE) members will be marching to the Western Cape Provincial Legislature on Friday 31 October, where they will hold a rally against educational inequality. Speeches describing a wide range of challenges facing schools will be made by “Equalisers” from across the Cape Peninsula, and a memorandum will be handed to MEC for Education Debbie Schafer. The organisation urges members of the public to join the march.

This rally brings together months of campaigning undertaken by Equalisers in schools in Khayelitsha, Kraaifontein, Nyanga, Strand, the City Bowl and other areas.

Under the banner “Fight Educational Inequality” EE’s members are rallying to bring their school-based campaigns to the attention of the government. Equalisers will demand support in their efforts to secure improvements to their schools in the following areas: dignified sanitation, quality school infrastructure, quality teaching and textbooks, computer centres, libraries and labs, justice for teenage pregnancy, access to condoms and sex education, end corporal punishment, safe schools, and after school sports and cultural programmes.

Learners have complained about poor quality teaching, and that there is no systematic mechanism to recruit stronger teachers into weaker schools, and that the allocation of teacher posts, which accounts for about 80% of provincial education spending, is not done on a pro-poor basis.

The march will start at 3pm moving from Kiezergrachtt to a rally at the provincial legislature in Wale Street where Equalisers will speak about the deep challenges in their schools and the campaigns they have taken up to address them.

The public is invited to attend.

For more information, contact: Nombulelo Nyathela (Spokesperson): 076 900 1029 Nishal Robb (Head of Campaigns): 079 511 6790

Or visit the Equal Education website, here.