Teacher union fights E Cape plan to shuff le posts

MANY “wealthy” Eastern Cape schools are set to lose teachers next year because of a controversial plan by the provincial education department to offer 4 000 teaching posts to smaller schools, a teachers’ union says.

The National Professional Teachers’ Organisation of South Africa said it was seeking legal opinion in a bid to stop the department from implementing the process.

Union president Basil Manuel said the organisation had been told the 4 000 posts were earmarked for distribution to smaller schools on an “ad hoc” basis.

According to the union, these schools included 371 that had eight teachers each or fewer and catered for a total of 27 962 pupils. About half these schools had only one teacher.

Manuel said one-teacher and other small schools had been closed down in other provinces, including KwaZulu-Natal, years ago. There are questions over the viability of such schools.

“There shouldn’t be one-teacher schools,” Manuel said. “Some of the schools with less than eight educators have already agreed to merge, but it’s not being implemented.”

He said the redistribution of teaching posts meant that “most quintile 5 schools” — so-called wealthy schools — were losing teachers.

“It’s a misunderstanding that quintile 5 schools are only former Model C schools, because there are many quintile 5 schools that are former coloured and Indian schools and even black schools,” Manuel said. “These are the schools that don’t have large bank balances.”

He said “robbing” former Model C schools of teaching posts “puts more pressure on parents and they are not always the wealthier parents”.

Paul Colditz, CEO of the Federation of Governing Bodies of South African Schools, said some schools in the Eastern Cape faced losing between six and eight teachers next year.

The Eastern Cape education department did not respond to queries.

Meanwhile, scores of schools in Limpopo were told this week that their total teaching posts for next year would be reduced.

A principal of a high school that will be losing 10 teaching posts next year said: “They say we must get results, and they take away teachers.”

Limpopo education department spokesman Naledzani Rasila said the number of teaching posts allocated to a school was determined by the number of pupils enrolled, among other things.