The South African Democratic Teachers’ Union (Sadtu) is set to launch a campaign against cost-cutting measures by the Western Cape Education Department (WCED).
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Several teachers in Western Cape public schools have joined forces with Sadtu to express concerns about the implications of WCED’s cost-containment measures announced in a circular on 21 November 2023.
The WCED circular mentioned the necessity of implementing cost-containment measures to maintain the number of permanent teaching posts, excluding substitute teachers for those on sick leave.
Furthermore, the circular outlined that any teaching posts not filled through the conversion process, which involves transitioning contract posts to permanent positions, by 31 March 2024, will require a formal recruitment and selection process to be filled.
Some schools without enough money in their SGB budgets will struggle due to these measures. Daily Maverick reported that some contract teachers were told their contracts wouldn’t be renewed after not being made permanent.
In one school, four teachers were affected, and the rest had to create a new timetable and share subjects.
A teacher who preferred not to be named out of fear of consequences told the Daily Maverick that ‘it is chaos. The workload will double for teachers until the recruitment process is completed and that can take months or even the entire school year.’
Another teacher who wished to remain anonymous expressed concerns about being assigned subjects they’re not qualified to teach, comparing it to learning on the job.
She listed ‘increased administrative tasks like more marking, subject files, and new planning midway through the year’ as some of the current challenges, adding that ‘matric teachers have more than one content subject in matric, which means double moderation.’
Teachers also ahd to work on Saturdays as an extra day for teaching and not as extra classes just so that they could meet the minimum requirements to teach GET subjects.
In response to these challenges, Sadtu said it will launch a campaign against the cost-containment measures.
‘Classrooms will be left without teachers where [educators are acting] in vacant deputy principal and departmental head positions as WCED will not be employing substitute educators in their place, even though the substitute posts would be within the approved staff establishment of the school,’ says Sibongile Kwazi, Sadtu Western Cape secretary.
‘Schools will not be able to employ contract teachers to substitute educators who are on sick leave for longer than 15 days.
‘Classrooms will be left without teachers when educators vacate their positions through natural attrition, or promotion as schools must now wait for the vacancy to be advertised and follow the recruitment process.’
Kwazi added that some posts advertised by the WCED have taken years to fill. ‘Currently, there are posts advertised in 2022 and longer that have not yet been filled.
‘The WCED purports to be pro-poor, but the implementation of the two circulars indicates that the education of the poor learners, who suffered learning losses during the Covid-19 lockdown is not a priority,’ says Kwazi.
‘The Department even has the audacity to advise schools to introduce the Temporary Revised Education Programme (Trep), wherein learners will not attend school daily but on certain days of the week.
‘This will further widen the gap between learners attending affluent schools and those from poor working-class backgrounds. WCED is promoting the creation of two economies within the province, one for the poor and one for the rich.’
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According to Bronagh Hammond, spokesperson for the WCED, the department was forced to implement stringent cost-cutting measures after the National Government announced major budget cuts.
‘We are currently facing an R870 million deficit in the 2024/25 financial year that needs to be absorbed to cover the cost of the increases in the nationally negotiated public sector wage agreement.’
In preparation for the implementation of these measures, the department did the following:
- Converted 3 100 contract positions to permanent posts between 1 January 2024 and 31 March 2024
- Special vacancy lists were made available so that schools could ensure that appointments to fill vacant posts could be made before 1 April 2024
- School Governing Bodies were urged to give recruitment processes their urgent attention, and the department made arrangements to expedite the administration around the filling of posts
He adds that the department is supporting schools in which the measures have not been implemented and in which unexpected or late resignations by permanent staff members exacerbated issues.
‘Our top priority now is to ensure that schools are supported, and we are working with schools to mitigate the risk by supporting them to finalise their conversion processes, more regularly advertising vacancy lists, supporting them to speed up recruitment and selection processes, and expediting appointments where schools have finalised these processes, and extending the contracts of educators appointed in vacant substantive posts until 31 December 2024.’
“Despite the major budget cuts, we are doing everything we can to support our schools, and will continue to fight to deliver quality education to the learners in the Western Cape.’
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