GOOD Speech by Brett Herron,
GOOD Secretary-General & Member of the Western Cape Parliament
11 June 2026
*Note to Editor: This speech was delivered during an interpellation in the Provincial Parliament on school dropouts.
Speaker,
We are facing an education crisis, and we are not treating it like one.
Just yesterday I met with a community in Wesbank.
I heard of children too afraid to walk to school. And honestly, I would not send my child to school either, if getting an education meant risking their life.
But here is what truly defies belief: when shooting breaks out, schools close and send children home, into the very streets where the shooting is happening.
They phone parents to fetch their kids. But these are poor communities. It is not safe for mothers to walk to school while bullets are flying either.
The one place that should be a refuge becomes a revolving door back into danger.
Yet while some children are dropping out, more than 2,000 learners in this province are still waiting to be placed. It is June.
How do we have both a dropout crisis and a placement crisis at the same time?
Every month a child spends out of school increases the likelihood they will never return.
And the Western Cape Education Department still cannot tell us how much capacity exists across the system, making effective planning nearly impossible.
The children dropping out and the children not being placed share the same reality: they are being pushed to the margins and asked to carry the consequences of failures they did not create.
Then, years later, we ask why so many young people turn to gangs and crime. But what alternatives have we given them?
Education is a constitutional right. It is also the most powerful tool we have to break cycles of poverty and violence.
Our children deserve more than promises. They deserve a future.
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