Don’t call it fiscal stability, call it what it is — social injustice

There are two serious threats facing the school system in SA.

The threat of extortion (teachers, pupils) and the threat of termination (teachers).

Extortion aims to keep you from going to, or staying in, school; termination aims to eject you from school.

Is anyone paying attention?

Extortion has already disfigured commerce in Cape Town’s market areas.

Gangs threaten small business for a “protection fee” and if the owner refuses to pay, there is threat, injury and even death.

The hits on businesspeople have a very simple purpose — show other potential clients what will happen to them if they do not play ball.

Variously labelled as an “extortion economy” or “shadow economy” that stretches from the central business districts to the townships, everyone is fair game, from nightclub bosses to spaza shop owners.

If you cannot make money the hard way, like ordinary people, here is a short cut that pays healthy dividends.

Yet I never thought this terror would be visited on teachers and children with sometimes deadly consequences, as recently reported in the Eastern Cape.

A principal refused to pay the protection fee and was shot and killed. A nurse in a school for the blind becomes a victim.

Even children on their way to school are threatened by hoodlums and more than one school had to close after money was demanded by the invaders.

Make no mistake, the scourge of extortion is spreading and I have not yet seen a co-ordinated effort by police and education authorities to nip this crime in the bud.

Thieves are running out of cash and schools, already struggling with limited resources, are the new targets for these thugs.

Talking about limited resources, the other threat is the loss of contract teachers under a severe regime of budget cuts initiated by the central government.

With a R3.8bn budget shortfall, the Western Cape alone faces losing 2,400 teachers by 2025.

There are several problems with this decision by the National Treasury to ensure “fiscal stability”.

One, since when is fiscal stability more important than ensuring stability in the teaching environment in a school system already failing the majority of our pupils?

No, this is not a case for reckless spending; it is a case for finding the money within the fiscus and prioritising education. Not doing so is reckless.

The new basic education minister has made breezy comments about revising the curriculum for the umpteenth time.

And do not forget those grand curricular plans for coding and robotics that make our heads spin as we race towards the middle of the 21st century.

Nice, but with all due respect, minister, this is your job — ensuring that every school has sufficient numbers of teachers to teach our children.

It is not glamorous, I know, but this is your most important responsibility.

Two, is there even a rudimentary consciousness among politicians about the educational consequences of such a decision?

Let me spell it out because their children are in fancy schools which will remain unaffected by such catastrophic loss.

You see, already the poorer schools have large classes with sometimes more than 40 pupils per class.

Because they are poor, there is no fallback position as at your child’s school, where accumulating financial reserves or raising school fees can instantly erase this problem.

What therefore happens is that larger classes become even larger in poor and working-class schools.

One school I know of expects to have to do mass teaching (combine classes) in a hall to cope with the looming crisis of teacher shortages.

It cannot afford the luxury of small group instruction and one-on-one tuition.

Three, if you cannot as government retain teachers in ordinary state schools, why on earth did you make grade R compulsory?

Did you bite off more than you can chew?

Or was this an act of political hubris knowing full well that you cannot afford to expand compulsory education downwards?

Of course, a compulsory grade R makes educational sense; but surely you would have known if it did not make financial sense.

What is at stake here is a question of fairness or, more fundamentally, one of social justice.

Which begs the question, why are we talking about the coming crisis only in fiscal terms?

Or have our moral arteries become so hardened by the everyday-ness of inequality around us that we cannot “see”, or no longer care, about allocation decisions that make the rich richer and leave the poor in even greater misery?

Is this what we have become, South Africa?