District director Amos Fetsha has reassigned 18 of 63 teachers identified by the provincial education department as "excess" in an attempt to fill 136 vacancies in the Grahamstown district.
District director Amos Fetsha has reassigned 18 of 63 teachers identified by the provincial education department as "excess" in an attempt to fill 136 vacancies in the Grahamstown district.
Even so, Grahamstown will remain short of teachers – particularly senior teachers, Fetsha told Grocott's Mail on Friday. "The crisis of a teacher shortage in Grahamstown will remain, even though the department has identified 63 additional educators," Fetsha warned.
The 63 "extras" include one deputy principal, two heads of department and 60 post level-1 teachers.
Of those 63, Fetsha said, his office had placed 18: the deputy principal, the two HODs and 15 of the 60 post level-1 teachers.
"But they are yet to receive their placement letters and this should be done [this]week," said Fetsha.
The department's directive was that Fetsha's office use the 63 "extras" to help fill a total of 136 vacancies in the Grahamstown district (16 deputy principals, 29 HODs, 91 post level-1 educators).
But it wasn't as simple as that.
Of those 63, he was able to use only 18 to fill those vacancies.
Twenty-eight couldn't be placed because they didn't have the particular skills being sought. Three of the 63, Fetsha said, were unlikely to return to the education department.
And Fetsha is appealing for another 14 to be considered essential rather than "excess".
He is therefore still struggling to fill 118 vacancies: 15 deputy principals, 27 HODs and 76 post level-1 teachers.
Fetsha said he would appeal against the movement of 14 teachers among the 63 "excess" teachers. "I cannot release those," Fetsha said. "It is cases of farms schools that have 23 learners and there are two teachers; one is identified as excess because the [official]teacher-learner ratio determines that there must be one teacher to 23 learners."
"Now my appeal is based on the fact that if the one teacher gets sick for a week, that will mean there will be no school that week," he explained. "I have several cases like that in the district."
He said other appeals were for rural high schools where the streams were limited. "In those areas there are not many streams. Although there might be as many as 17 teachers, if we moved them, we would deprive those learners of having a choice of different streams."
"We are following the rule of identifying additional educators, but there is a clause that accommodates appeals," Fetsha said.
Adding to Fetsha's challenge is the fact that there are three teachers who are on "long-capacity" leave.
"They are likely never coming back to the system and they are still on the payroll of the department.
These cases are yet to be resolved," Fetsha said.
And of the additional teachers identified by the department, 28 were not placeable, according to Fetsha.
"They have to be re-skilled, or be used as remedial teachers in the education support services. "For example, there is a shortage of Maths teachers. If they can be re-skilled to be maths teachers, they will remain in their schools."
Fetsha said there were many Foundation Phase teachers on the verge of retirement.
Once they had retired, some of the 28 could be moved into their posts.
"We hope this process [of moving teachers]will be concluded by next week," he said.
However, he cautioned that the impasse between teachers' union Sadtu and the Eastern Cape Department of Education, had the potential to stall the process.
Sadtu has called for temporary teachers to be placed in vacant posts, before the "excess" teachers are moved.
