The first day of a child’s official school career should be a momentous one. A time to celebrate, as junior sets off to conquer this strange new place, make new friends, and learn about the marvel that is this world we live in. 

But we always spoil it for those not privileged enough to attend expensive private schools. 

Again, there is not enough space for grade one learners, particularly in urban schools.

Again.

Like clockwork, every first school day of the year, there are all too familiar scenes of parents milling around school administration blocks, looking for space. These scenes again dominate newspapers and social media.

On Tuesday, the principal of Green Leaves Primary School in Windhoek’s Okahandja Park informal settlement and his staff came to work in overalls, ready to construct extra classes with corrugated iron sheets to accommodate the hundreds of children in need of space.

Teachers should not do construction work. They should teach. 

All over the country, teachers had to endure insults from irate parents, who seemingly had no idea last year that they had a child old enough to start school this year.

This is a serious failure on every level.

Central government has consistently failed to make rural areas viable and attractive enough for people to stay and work close to where they are from. This has caused urban migration at a mass scale, leaving urban councils unable to create enough housing and services for their residents. The size of informal settlements on the outskirts of towns and cities has, therefore, exploded. The tendency to speculate with urban land has also not helped.

One of the major reasons for mass urbanisation is the search for better education. Municipalities in these areas should ensure pupils do not travel great distances to attend school, especially not at primary school age. Young children should be able to go to school in the neighbourhoods they live in, where they have communities who care for them and where poor parents do not have to spend exorbitant fees for transport.  

While it is no silver bullet for the problems facing Namibians, ensuring quality education can be achieved in every neighbourhood and every town across the country. This will see us taking great strides towards fulfilling the responsibility we all bear to future generations. Not just their education, but their safety and the life they will one day live.

Government has also not built enough schools. The decision to not conduct a national census in 2021 will haunt us for decades to come. We have money for an array of luxuries, including incessant unproductive travelling by civil servants and political office-bearers, but can’t muster the funds for a vital census. 

The planning in the ministry of education and government, in general, has been lackadaisical at best.

How government does not know how many six-year-olds will look for a desk and chair in a specific year is inexcusable.

But parents must take some of the blame as well. Registering children immediately after birth will help government have a better idea of the demand for school facilities. They should also apply for places in schools in the middle of the previous year when schools start accepting applications. This would help schools organise and plan for the next year. Having parents flooding school premises on the first day is a disrupting and seemingly unending trend in Namibia.

Schools have limited space. 

Schools are dynamic and complex organisations that need meticulous planning and organising. When schools already know in the previous year how many children they would have for a specific grade the following year, they would know how many additional teachers they would need to appoint, or determine the learner-teacher ratio as well as acquire the right amount of teaching materials and aids. 

Parents, teachers and the government carry such great responsibility to not have a platform for communication and the exchange of ideas. This situation with grade one learners is a confluence of so many of the greater problems we face as a country. Once again, this is a problem that the digitisation of certain institutions and processes would so easily solve.

The minister of education has received a massive backlash for her decision to put the blame squarely on teachers. However, everyone should pull up their socks if we are to enjoy the benefits of a young, growing population.

We should all do better.