Not enough teachers to go around
HERALD REPORTER
DESPITE the Education Department insisting there is no crisis regarding the shortage of teachers in the Eastern Cape, the SA Democratic Teachers’ Union says the province is facing a shortage of "massive proportions”.
Provincial education department spokesman Loyiso Pulumani said the only shortage was for maths and science teachers in the rural areas of the province.
"We do have a definite shortage of maths and science teachers for schools in Lusikisiki, and the rural Transkei. Teachers simply do not want to be placed in these areas,” he said.
However, Sadtu provincial secretary Fezeka Loliwe said the province was facing a huge teacher shortage.
"Even before the new curriculum was introduced the province was facing a huge shortage. It is even worse now because the new curriculum calls for teachers to give individual attention and in some schools we have one teacher with a class of 70 pupils. Individual attention is non-existent,” she said.
Loliwe also said there were almost no schools where a teacher could concentrate on one subject.
"In all schools teachers are focussing on two learning areas and in other schools you find teachers struggling with up to four learning areas. When I was still teaching I was the only maths teacher at my school teaching grades 8 through until 12. This is a tremendous workload for any teacher.”
She said the new curriculum called for extra work and more individual attention where the ideal would be a pupil teacher ratio of one to 25.
"In abnormal circumstances the ratio may go up to one to 35. But this is only in abnormal circumstances. In most classes in the Eastern Cape we have classes of 50 to 70 pupils at the moment. The department would like us to believe that there is no crisis but there is.”
She said the department was leading the public to believe that education today revolved around maths and science.
"They never talk about how many English teachers there are in the province, but most pupils need proper instruction in English to understand maths and science concepts that they are taught. English is a very important subject as well.”
Loliwe said it would still be a long time before Sadtu was happy with the number of teachers in the province.
"It will still be a long walk but until we achieve the standards that we find in former model C schools where 40 or more pupils in a classroom is unheard of, we will keep fighting for it.”
Pulumani said the department was currently providing 132 teaching students with financial assistance for their studies so that once they graduated the department would be able to "deploy them to the areas where maths and science teachers are desperately needed”.
"We recruited 1400 permanent teachers in the last year and 3400 the year before. Next year we are looking at recruiting 1200 teachers and we are currently have 66000 permanent educators in the province. There are also 5000 temporary teachers in the province.”
Earlier this year, Mike Randell, vice-chairman of the Federation of Governing Bodies of SA, announced that only a fraction of teaching vacancies were advertised by the Education Department for this year.
The Eastern Cape education department was ordered to publish all vacant teaching posts in the province by the end of January following an order granted to the Suid-Afrikaanse Onderwysersunie (SAOU) by the Bhisho High Court last November.
However, only 462 posts were advertised. Randell said there were actually hundreds more posts but the department had distorted the real number of vacant posts. The reason given for this figure was "financial constraints.”
Salaries for teachers make up for the bulk of the R18-billion budget the provincial education department received this year.
