Some of you may have been reading about the problems being faced by the schools in the Eastern Cape ( and much of South Africa) at the start of the new school year. Paul ( our local partner) has been keeping us up to date as well as he can. There is much confusion but as we understand it at the moment the challenges are.

1. 6,000 temporary teachers in the province have not had their contracts renewed –  resulting in a shuffle of teachers happening at the moment.This where we are short of teachers already.

2.The government  schools nutrition programme has been suspended – we are unclear for how long – it may be just until April it could be much longer.

3. Learner transport (School buses ) has been cancelled in Rural Areas (affects AV Bukani) until budget can been found – possible reintroduction in 2^nd term.

4. Stationary has not been delivered to schools yet, but a tender has been put out, but not awarded yet.

This all makes very worrying reading and creates huge tressure for the , already, overstretched schools ( The feeding programme suspension will have implications for Community programmes like Emmanuel too).

We will update the blog when we have news but there seems to be a great deal of confusion at the moment.