One teacher school battles
Principal does her best, but pupils’ marks have begun to show deterioration
FEELING like the forgotten stepchildren of the Eastern Cape Education Department, parents of pupils at a small farm school in a remote town – where the principal is also the sole teacher in the primary school – are pleading with the department to appoint a much-needed teacher.
Kleinpoort Primary School principal Roseline Mthwalo has to split her six-hour work day doing her admin as head of the school as well as take turns teaching her 46 pupils in grades 1 to 7.
Her daily routine for the past two years has been to attend to Grade 1 to 3 pupils between 8am and 10.45am. From 11am to 1pm she teaches the rest of the school before marking and assessing the day’s work.
Mthwalo feels that her pupils – most of whom travel as far as 10km to and from school daily – are being cheated out of adequate education as it was difficult to even cover the required curriculum.
According to the post distribution for this year, she said, the school was meant to have another teacher, but so far the department had failed to provide one.
The school, near Aberdeen, falls under the Graaff-Reinet district, where a number of schools – including Pearston Primary – have been badly affected by a severe teacher shortage.
“I’m alone here. I have to do the management as well as teaching. I’m forced to do the damaging practice of multi-grade teaching and the pupils are suffering,” she said.
“I have to find creative ways of teaching and as much as we manage to get through a lot of work, we are hardly able to finish the syllabus. Pupils are forced to suffer because of something not their fault.”
While teaching Grade 1 pupils in the foundation phase class, the other two grades pass the time by counting and reading. In the senior phase class, which is behind a concertina door, pupils quietly do their work as they wait for Mthwalo to teach after the short break.
Mthwalo said rushing through the work to get to other classes was of grave concern as there were a number of special needs pupils – “although not officially assessed by psychologists” – who needed more contact time.
“The foundation phase pupils need a lot of time and so do our special needs children. The mainstream pupils manage to pass despite the circumstances, but it is not so easy for others,” she said.
“We sometimes don’t even finish the curriculum. [This] is a huge injustice to the kids.”
While her pupils managed a 60% average in the annual national assessment (ANA) results, Mthwalo said, they battled with language – reading, writing and grammar.
“At least if we get another teacher, that would at least give the pupils more contact time,” she said.
Grade 7 pupil Johandra Endoné, 14, said they had to be disciplined in their studies in order to make it through: “This doesn’t feel nice. She [Mthwalo] is alone and there is no chance to do everything.
“If we want to pass, we must push ourselves and be very disciplined. We must teach ourselves, really.”
Parents said they were pleading with the department to provide a teacher as their children’s marks were dropping.
Maria Uithaler said her son, in Grade 4, used to perform well, but had taken a dip because of the lack of a teacher.
“I don’t blame the school or the principal, but we need more teachers. [Mthwalo] does her best, but it is not easy having to teach the whole school by herself.”
Eastern Cape Education Department spokesman Malibongwe Mtima said Graaff-Reinet district director Nicky de Bruyn had “been given the authority to provide muchneeded relief to some of the schools in the district”.
WHILE many teachers in the province are finding it difficult to cope with the increased workload caused by the teacher shortage, the principal of a small farm school near Aberdeen is bravely struggling on alone in a determined effort to give the school’s 46 pupils an education.
But trying to do her admin duties as principal as well as teach the children weighs heavily on her as she feels the pupils are being shortchanged.
She says the foundation phase and special needs pupils, especially, need more contact time with a teacher.
The school falls under the Graaff-Reinet district, where a number of schools have been badly affected by a severe teacher shortage.
Kleinpoort Primary School principal Roseline Mthwalo splits her day between doing her admin and teaching the pupils in grades 1 to 7.
She says the school is meant to have another teacher, but is still waiting for the department to provide one.
Her feelings of helplessness and dejection are common among the province’s teachers, overburdened with work due to the ongoing teacher shortages and frustrated by the lack of response to the pleas for more teachers.
On the flip-side, Eastern Cape Education boss Mthunywa Ngonzo believes the schools are making it difficult to fill vacancies as some reject teachers given to them through the redeployment process.
Yet here we have a farm school with a sole teacher struggling along as best she can to educate her small group of pupils, pleading – along with the parents – for just one teacher to help.
Has anyone bothered to respond?
Instead of putting so much effort into improving the country’s matric results, more focus should be placed on the critical foundation phase – only then can we hope to see consistently good matric results.
Provincial Education Department spokesman Malibongwe Mtima says the Graaff-Reinet district director has been given the go-ahead “to provide much-needed relief to some of the schools in the district”, but cannot say which schools will get relief. Really?
Enough is enough. The ongoing teacher shortage must be sorted out urgently.
Robbing our children of a good education is a violation of a basic human right.
Our children deserve better.