Mary Waters Secondary School pupils staged a march against teacher shortages in Grahamstown yesterday.
Mary Waters Secondary School pupils staged a march against teacher shortages in Grahamstown yesterday.
Meanwhile, the Eastern Cape education department has set itself up for a showdown with teacher union Sadtu with the announcement that it will take disciplinary action against so-called excess teachers who have refused to be redeployed.
The move has been hailed by the DA, which also welcomed the department's decision not to seek additional funding from the Treasury to appoint more teachers.
The DA holds that excess teachers should be redistributed acdcording to schools' needs.
"Such a step would have been unwise, because the department would simply not sort out its staffing issues," said DA shadow MEC for Education, Edmund van Vuuren in a media statement yesterday.
Speaking to Grocott's Mail yesterday, Mary Waters Principal Samuel Wessels said the school had been short of 11 teachers since the start of the school year.
He said Grade 10 and 11 pupils at his school were missing out on certain subjects altogether and that there were too many free periods.
"These learners are getting angry because they don't have teachers," said Wessels, adding that the problem had remained unresolved for the past three years.
"These learners are very angry – and who is to blame for depriving them of the basic right to education?" he said. Wessels said Mary Waters had 24 teachers to 1 117 pupils and said there was no support from the education department.
"We were supposed to have teachers when school opened in January. I wonder why it is so difficult to fill these vacancies," he said.
Parent Patricia May said she was furious that pupils at the school had no teachers.
"The government is always preaching education – but they don't respond immediately when learners are asking for teachers," May said.
When asked about teacher shortages at Mary Waters, District Director of the education department Amos Fetsha referred Grocott's Mail back to Wessels, saying the newspaper should ask him how they would be resolved.
In Tuesday's edition, Grocott's Mail reported that Fetsha had been able to use only 18 of 63 teachers identified by the provincial education department as "excess" to start filling 136 vacancies in the Grahamstown district.
Grahamstown would remain short of teachers – particularly senior teachers, he warned.
He said the reassigned teachers should receive their placement letters and this week. The South African Democratic Teachers Union has called for temporary teachers to be placed in vacant posts, before so-called excess teachers are moved.
Below are the numbers of students without teachers by grade and subject:
Grade 8
- Mathematics – 250
- English Home Language – 150
- Natural Sciences (Afrikaans) – 100
- Life Orientation (Afrikaans) – 100
- Social Sciences (Afrikaans) – 100
Grade 9
- English Home Language – 186
- Natural Sciences – 285
- Arts & Culture – 285
- Mathematics – 285
Grade 10
- Afrikaans Home Language – 82
- Afrikaans First Additional Language – 183
- English Home Language – 183
- Mathematics (10F) – 46
- Mathematical Literacy (10C, 10D) – 96
- Geography (10A-F) – 265
Grade 11
- English Home Language – 153
- English First Additional Language – 67
- Geography (11A-C) – 108
