Teaching posts to stay unchanged

Support staff vacancies to increase from 6,377 to 7,080, says Makupula

The MEC of Education, Mandla Makupula, on Tuesday declared that the number of teaching posts in the Eastern Cape next year would remain unchanged at 54,026.

However Makupula did say that non-teaching posts for support staff would be upped to 7,080 from this year’s 6,377.

According to a presentation made by the department of education’s financial committee two weeks ago, there were still 2,536 unfilled posts for the 2018 period. This included 478 principals, 447 HoDs and 1,614 teachers.

Makupula outlined plans to speed up the hiring of teachers which included allowing districts to hire a level 1 teacher and principals working with district officials to allow walkins. At the press briefing about teaching and non-teaching posts for 2019, Makupula indicated that of the 3,098 teaching posts advertised this year, 1,627 were filled and 696 Fundza Lushaka educators were placed.

On Monday Makupula, education superintendent-general Themba Kojana and the deputy director-general, Ray Tywakadi, said they were unable to provide the exact number of vacant posts. “It is difficult to give the exact figures because those figures change on a daily basis,” said Kojana.

“As we speak now it is possible there is a teacher who is resigning or there is a teacher who is being appointed or gets ill, so it’s a human factor. We can check on our records as at a certain time, but by the time we get things might have change,” said Makupula.

“It’s not like a pen that you can leave here and still find it here.”

Kojana said in an attempt to fill posts more speedily, the department had given the duty to appoint post level 1 teachers to the districts and the department has agreed with teacher unions to allow walk-in teachers. “This prevents that longchain of filling posts. It takes too long to advertise a post and find the suitable candidate so to prevent having no teacher in front of each learner we have adopted these two approaches,” Kojana said.

The MEC vowed no schools would have more than the agreed 1:36 teacher:learner ratio.

Makupula said schools would receive their new staffing details from September 4.

As we speak now it is possible that there is a teacher who is resigning