THEY SAID they would rather stay at home than hang out with the students of Khayelihle High School, Mbumbulu, who were doing their matric and were being repeated at Grade 11.
These students say that they no longer understand boxing as they feel that they have become someone’s football. One of these students says that they have failed Grade 11 three times in the past years.
Last year he says they all passed and were transferred to Grade 12. He says that the food on the plate changed when the inspector came and gave them an order that all these 11 students must go back to Grade 11.
”We didn’t get a good explanation why it was said like this. What we have been told is that our names do not come from the students of this school who are doing matric because we have failed Grade 11. This thing is confusing us as to how it happened?,” said another student.
He said it is strange to them that they can do matric from January when schools open until March and then someone will come and tell them to go back to Grade 11. They called this pure nonsense.
”We were all fed up and decided to boycott the school, because this is not the case,” he explained.
One of these students echoed the words of his colleague and said that they are in the dark about what is really happening to them in this school. He said they felt it was better to stay at home than to be disappointed when they were turned away.
One member of the parents’ committee, who requested that his name be withheld, said that he is well aware of the matter, and said that they have tried many times to fix it, but things just don’t come together.
”I was there, I know very well the issue you are talking about. These students came to complain to the principal to ask why they fail in the same way all their grades are the same,” explained a member of the committee.
He said some of the teachers told the children’s parents that they were wandering in the dark because the children had passed but that was changed.
He says that later the principal met with him and finally he said that he saw the mistake and apologized.
He said that they had another meeting on this issue together with the principal, but even then they did not respond to anything new.
“When we came back from the meeting, the second one hit me and said he saw correctly, no students should pass and they should be sent back to Grade 11,” he explained.
He says that he eventually bowed his horn to the principal and agreed to let these students go to matric. ”After that we heard in the villages that there are inspectors who have decided to send them back to Grade 11,” he explained.
The spokesperson for the KwaZulu-Natal Department of Education, Muzi Mahlambi, said that the circuit could change the school’s decision regarding the results of students who passed or were retaken. ”However, in this case the students forced the principal to pass the circuit and then he changed that decision using his own principles,” explained Mahlambi.