Budget cuts bite ’Plain teachers
Pupils, parents and teachers protested outside Mitchell’s Plain High School last Friday after seven contract teachers were let go there in the wake of state budget cuts.
“This is not right. We are playing with the livelihood of our teachers and the education of the future leaders of our country,” said a senior teacher at the school who did not want to be named.
The teacher, who was among several members of the school’s permanent staff who joined the peaceful protest, called the loss of the seven teachers “devastating”.
“Three of the seven were mathematics teachers. This school has grown exponentially. With that, we have many teachers under contract. They were supposed to have 45 teachers, but they’re left with 35,” he said.
“How do you let go of teachers at the end of the first term? We’re working to improve the quality of education for each pupil. We’re already marginalised. This is going to cause huge discipline issues, under-staffing, teachers teaching out of their subject area, teachers stressed about increased workload, mental health issues leading to increased absenteeism, to name a few.”
In a statement on Thursday April 4, Western Cape Education Department spokesperson Bronagh Hammond said the department faced an R870 million deficit for the current financial year “that needs to be absorbed to cover the cost of the increases in the nationally negotiated public sector wage agreement”.
In response to national government budget cuts announced last year, the WCED had issued a circular in November warning that “cost containment measures” were needed to retain permanent teaching posts and maintain stability in schools, she said.
Ms Hammond told the Plainsman on Monday that the department was not firing teachers or terminating contracts. However, she added, schools had been notified in November that they should nominate contract posts they wished to have extended or made permanent.
“We’ve not cut the number of teaching posts in the system. Teachers who didn’t get contract extensions or conversions are welcome to apply for available posts on our vacancy lists as advertised,” she said.
Eight hundred contract teachers would be permanently employed by the department by May 1, and where teachers’ contracts had expired, recruitment was being sped up to fill posts with permanent appointments, she said.
The WCED had already permanently employed 3100 teachers who were previously on contract, extended 2282 contracts until the end of the year, accelerated recruitment for vacant posts and employed teachers on contract in special cases, she said.
The senior teacher who spoke to the Plainsman said the teachers who had been let go had lost their livelihoods and had families to support.
Another permanent teacher at the school said Mitchell’s Plain High, as a non-fee-paying school, could not afford governing body posts so the loss of the seven staff would be particularly disruptive.
“Communities and our children are suffering. This was done in such an immoral and unethical way,” he said.
A third teacher added: “It’s always the poorest of the poor; it's not just affecting us but most schools in Mitchell’s Plain. Our school has lost a lot of teachers. Our pupils come from disadvantaged areas. Our children will always be disadvantaged when it comes to matric results, and then the department wants to know why we’re not performing.”
Parent Fazlin Ceres said she protested so her child’s teachers could return. “One of our best maths teachers was let go in the first term. They were the finest,” she said.
