Why weren't we told our school would be closing? (Pretoria News)

DESPONDENT parents will turn to the Pretoria High Court in a bid to force the Limpopo MEC for education to reopen a farm school which was forced to close its doors after 47 years. The parents are all farm workers and parents of children who, up until the end of last year, attended the Seribane Primary School on the farm Marakeli in Limpopo. The farm belongs to South African National Parks.

One of the parents, Magdeline Mokwena, said in papers filed at court that the school, which is within walking distance of the students' dwellings, has existed for the past 47 years and provided education for children living on farms in the adjacent area. Their parents are either labourers or unemployed and extremely poor. The parents were told at the end of last year that a meeting was to be held at the school with the manager of Marakele National Park. At the meeting, they were told the school was due to be closed. "We were extremely upset and said that we did not consent to the closure of the school."

As they did not hear anything further, they prepared their children for the reopening of the school year in January this year. But when they arrived at the school, the children were informed by an official of the education department that the school had closed and that they were to get onto a bus which would transport them to another school.

Mokwena said the parents were never consulted about this and without their permission, the children were taken to a school in Thabazimbi. The outraged parents asked the Public Protector to help them, but when they did not receive any response, they turned to Lawyers for Human Rights (LHR) who agreed to assist them.

LHR wrote letters to the park and to the education department, requesting them to reopen the school by Monday, February 1. Again the education department did not respond. South African National Parks undertook to give the parents a full report on why the school had been closed, but this has not been forthcoming. LHR says in terms of the law, due process must be followed before a public school can be closed.

Apparently that did not happen in this case. Only the education department can decide to close a school, but in this case it appeared that the South African National parks decided to close the school. Mokwena said whereas their children had previously had the freedom to walk to school and back, they are now transported to Thabazimbi in the early hours of the morning and only return later in the afternoon.

The new school which they have to attend does not have a Grade R class and the children who were supposed to attend this grade must now stay at home. The Deo Gloria School in Thabazimbi has 70 learners per class.  "Our children are not receiving the quality education, care and attention they were used to at their old school.

"They were used to the peaceful environment of a farm school and are overwhelmed by the size and demands of a large city school," said Mokwena. She said that since the department had not consulted with the parents, they  had no way of raising their concerns. The parents said that it is a matter of urgency that the school be reopened as soon as possible so that their children are subjected to minimal disruption.