There are 6,483 Eastern Cape teachers bunking school every day.
The province has recorded the second-highest percentage of teacher absenteeism in the country, with 12% of teachers marked absent daily.
This was revealed by basic education minister Angie Motshekga on Monday when she released the 2017 school monitoring survey.
The survey measures the progress of key goals in state schools.
According to the latest school post provision norms, there are 54,026 teachers in the province. The report revealed that the number of teachers who are absent from school on a daily basis throughout the country has increased from 8% to 10%.
Topping the list was the Northern Cape with 13%, followed by the North-West and the Eastern Cape, both at 12%.
Speaking at a media briefing held at the government communication and information system conference centre in Pretoria, where the report was released, Motshekga said: “We must do more to support our teachers. There’s a need to drill deeper into the statistics to understand this leave of absence phenomenon”.
Limpopo and the Free State recorded the lowest teacher absence at 6% and 7%, respectively.
Some other key findings in the report for the Eastern Cape include:
A significant increase in providing access to a library or media centre.
The percentage of schools that had libraries and media centres increased from 20% in primary school and 26% in secondary in 2011 to 38% in primary and 50% in high schools in 2017; and
The availability of management documents such as teacher and class registers was low, and academic improvement plans and non-textbook asset registers were most often found to be missing.
The survey was conducted in a national sample of 1,000 schools offering Grade 6, as well as in a sample of 1,000 schools offering Grade 12.
Motshekga said the survey had been done so that the department could have an “arm’s length and helicopter view” of the progress and challenges in the sector since the last survey of 2011.
“It looks at the overall health of the system.
“It is no performance management tool for our teachers and officials. Most importantly, the survey focuses on gathering information which is not available in other data sets, such as those collected by Stats SA,” said Motshekga.
Naptosa provincial CEO, Loyiso Mbinda, said improper recording of leave and a lack of updates from the department were factors underlying the problem.
“There are no consequences so there is nothing stopping people from being absent on a regular basis. There is also a high volume of non-captured leave days and no regular updates from the department. Leave is not captured on a monthly basis and is therefore often abused. The dangers of teachers being absent boils over to the bad academic performance of the province over a number of years.“Teachers are under serious stress lately and may feel that there is no other way to avoid badly behaved children.“The general working environment also contributes to absenteeism as many schools don't even have proper classrooms or functioning toilets, “ he said.Jet Education Services senior researcher, Nick Taylor said: “It’s rampant throughout the country, not just the Eastern Cape and even when teachers are at school they are not in the classroom or they leave midday. There is a huge amount of time being wasted and there is no discipline…”Sadtu provincial secretary, Chris Mdingi, said that he had not yet seen the report and that the findings would remain allegations until he had seen empirical evidence.