FRIDAY, 11.00AM:
EDUCATION Minister Sibusiso Bengu won the right on Thursday to determine requirements for the appointment, transfer and promotion of teachers in government schools.
With the passage of the Education Laws Amendment Bill, the minister made good on his threat to introduce legislation overturning the court victory of a Cape Town primary school, which had won the right to chose its own teachers on the basis of ability.
At issue is the minister’s embattled “rightsizing” operation, an attempt to cut expenditure on education by cutting its largest single item, the salary bill. Critics charge that it is the most experienced teachers who have opted for retrenchment packages rather than face the threat of “redeployment” to a school chosen by their provincial education department.
The names of teachers designated for redeployment are placed on a list in each province – and it is from this list that governing bodies of government schools will be expected to hire. It is a question, say observers, of whether the government or the schools’ governing bodies decide which teachers a school may hire.
Not so, says Bengu. His Bill contains an amendment allowing governing bodies to hire extra staff from their own funds. “The bitter reality … is that our public funds are incapable of meeting our educational needs at present,” Bengu told Parliament. And governing bodies who want to hire teachers not on the redeployment list are “obstinate defenders of exclusivity and privilege”.
Not surprisingly, the Bill was opposed by the National Party, Democratic Party, Freedom Front and African Christian Democratic Party. The Pan Africanist Congress did not become involved. And an NP effort to introduce amendments to the Bill was rejected by Deputy Speaker Baleka Mbete-Kgositsile.