"The department has failed the community,” said Eastern Cape MEC for Education, Mandla Makupula, shortly before receiving a petition from pupils, parents and teachers of Mary Waters High School on Monday.
"The department has failed the community,” said Eastern Cape MEC for Education, Mandla Makupula, shortly before receiving a petition from pupils, parents and teachers of Mary Waters High School on Monday.
Apologising for the crisis in Eastern Cape schools, he laid the blame squarely at the door of the education department. “Officials failed to do their jobs properly," Makupula said. He was addressing parents, teachers and the school's governing body to discuss the shortage of teachers at the school, resulting from the department's decision not to reappoint temporary teachers until an audit had been conducted.
United in their frustration, parents, teachers and pupils of the school had marched to the education department's district offices last week to hand over a petition to district director, Amos Fetsha.
Chairperson of the school's governing body, Errol Goliath, told Makupula that Grade 12 pupils at the school did not have an English First Language teacher. “If the students fail it, they automatically fail the exams,” said Goliath.
Teacher Zankie Mahlahla the shortage of teachers meant it was difficult to maintain discipline in a school with more than 1 172 pupils, and were it not for the help pupils were getting from university students, they would be a lot worse off.
“Ever since I started at this school in 2001, we relied on the assistance of Rhodes students, who are tutoring the learners,” said Mahlahla, pleading with Makupula to look into the matter.
Principal Samuel Wessels said there were 27 teachers at the school, and that they needed 38 teachers to function normally. “Last year we had 36 teachers, but we managed to pull through,” he said.
“We made a call to volunteers to come and assist us. Our classes run with more than 50 learners. Some are standing around in classrooms, and this creates disciplinary problems, but we are trying to continue under the circumstances.”
Makupula acknowledged the efforts the school had made and promised to follow up. “I'm a teacher myself. I know how hard this is for teachers,” he said.
Referring to the Association of School Governing Bodies' court application seeking to compel the department to immediately reinstate thousands of temporary teachers whose contracts were terminated last year, Makupula said, “We are busy working on the matter."
He would not comment on the rumour that his department was on the verge of announcing that it would recruit 2 400 teachers. “We will do our best to address all these problems, and education is a matter for all of us,” Makupula said.
