Teachers forced to live in abandoned, dilapidated school building

Half a dozen schoolteachers are living without electricity, water and sanitation in an abandoned boarding school facility at Nigel High School in the far East Rand.

They have been paying rent to the school to sleep in the dilapidated building for years. This, after the hostel was shut down by government post pandemic due to a lack of funding.

A teacher, who lives in the abandoned building and did not want to be named, said he and his colleagues rely on school neighbours to access services.

Teachers living in squalor

“We survive on the kindness of people close by,” said the teacher.

“We occasionally wire electricity from them and when the school is shut, buckets of water.”

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To ablute, the teachers must walk to the school, splash with some water instead of a shower, and use the loo. But that only works during school hours, when toilets are unlocked.

For this, they pay R3 000 a month in rent to the school. Purportedly in cash, according to a source.

Inside, the Nigel High School boarding house looks like it could have been a decent place to stay, years ago. Now, old, filthy mattresses, linen and skeletons of steel-framed beds litter many of the rooms. Pieces of ceiling are missing, shattered windows, bust concrete garden furniture and a collection of weeds on the outside.

Teachers pay R3k per month for rent

Drying laundry lines a passage. A portion of the boarding house is locked off with heavy security gates. On the other side of it, there used to be an industrial sized and fully equipped kitchen.

“It’s empty now, it’s all been stolen,” said the teacher.

Mike Waters, DA spokesperson in Gauteng, said that he was shocked.

“How could the principal or the department of basic education justify having teachers pay rent to live in appalling conditions like this? How can they teach children adequately when they must prepare lessons in the dark and cannot ablute properly?” he said.

The department did not respond to queries over the R18 000 monthly rent collection from teachers in the hostel, but additional sources confirmed that the monies are paid directly to the school.

Sporting facilities run down and overgrown

The skeleton of the old boarding school is not the only eyesore. Sporting facilities are run down and overgrown.

According to a staff member, who spoke to The Citizen in confidence, essential maintenance equipment was repossessed by a financial institution a short while ago. This, while 1 000 pupils cram facilities built for about 300 pupils.

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Across from the sports field jungle, there’s a fenced off pile of old school desks. Beyond that was where pupils used to be able to cheer for their teams. There are pockmarked old tennis courts and a completely busted up tennis practice court.

By the looks of it, Nigel High School’s sporting facilities are limited to a single, somewhat maintained, soccer-cum-athletics field. There’s a netball court that’s somewhat maintained but has no fence. Paint peels from the walls and a few broken windows line the corridors.

A senior administrator at the school said the institution is in a state of decline due to severe maintenance challenges.

State of decline

They said that a growing pupil population far exceeds its original capacity. “Back in the day, we were built to accommodate up to 750 pupils,” the administrator said. “Now we’re sitting with over 1 000 pupils and the infrastructure just can’t cope.”

Gauteng education department spokesperson Steve Mabona said Nigel High’s pupil numbers increased over time due to the growing population within Nigel and Heidelberg areas.

“The school has applied for three mobile classes which will be delivered in due course,” he said.

Yet the administrator said the school is in dire straits financially.

Government said the school must manage its own maintenance and operations using a government-provided budget, along with school fees collected.

School must manage its own maintenance and operations

However, funds fall far short of what’s needed to keep the school running smoothly.

“We don’t even have a working toilet in some areas,” they added. “The football coach has been trying to get a lawn mower for months. It’s basic stuff, but there’s just no money.”

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Purportedly, maintenance equipment like tractor-lawnmowers were repossessed by financial institutions.

“Unless you can collect higher school fees, which we cannot do, you’re on your own. And when the problems start, they just snowball month after month,” the administrator added.

Mabona said it is the responsibility of the school governing board to maintain the facilities.

SGB responsibility to maintain school – GDE

“However, due to the tight economic pressure on businesses, the school couldn’t raise funds to maintain the facilities. Accordingly, the school fees collected are only enough to sustain the school’s running costs and pay salaries,” he said.

Nigel High is a fee-paying school charging around R800 per pupil a year. On 1 000 pupils, that’s around R800 000.

Waters said that the school is a museum for mismanagement.

“It is absolutely shocking how the school could have been allowed to rot like this,” he said.

“On one hand premier Panyaza Lesufi wants to build classrooms wherever he can find a spot yet, on the other, he has allowed facilities like Nigel High School to stagnate and to regress to a growing mess.

‘Museum for mismanagement’

“Why facilities that were there for decades cannot be maintained boggles the mind.”

According to Mabona, all maintenance challenges were escalated to relevant officials and he said the only real dilapidated aspect of the facility is the old boarding school, which was closed.

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While Mabona did not directly answer queries about the teacher’s rental and whether the department was aware of it; he did say via a WhatsApp message to The Citizen that it was challenging to respond in the absence of information.

He did commit to responding officially via e-mail on that issue, but that did not occur by the time of publication.

Without urgent intervention, the administrator warned, the school risks falling into complete disrepair.

School risks falling into disrepair

“We need help, from the municipality, from government, from anyone. If nothing changes, this place is going the way of every other rundown public facility you’ve seen. It’s already started.”

Waters said he will be writing to the chair of the Gauteng education portfolio committee, to request that an inspection of the school takes place, “in order to get to the bottom of this unacceptable situation”.

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