World Teachers’ Day celebrations are a global effort to enhance the status of the teaching profession. The recommendations of the 1966 International Labour Organisation/Unesco convention on the status of teachers identified five elements of the concept ‘status” as it applies to teachers:
material possessions of teachers compared to other professions.
Although South Africa was not represented at the 1966 convention in France, it has ratified all Unesco conventions and therefore our government and teacher organisations are liable for the implementation of the recommendations.
Celebrations of World Teachers’ Day in South Africa have become the centrepiece of teacher union activity to rebuild the image of the teaching profession, which suffered initially as a result of apartheid policies and now as a result of the transformation agenda.
Apartheid policies created social inequalities which affected the profession negatively. The teachers experienced the wrath of both students and the community for their seeming failure to deliver effective education. Discriminatory teacher training programmes and unequal treatment resulted in the loss of self-confidence for many teachers in the system.
But a look at the present transformation processes as they affect teachers reveals continuing misconceptions about teachers as a group. There seems to be an assumption that, when the new political order began in 1994, teachers were already a privileged group. This assumption was supported by the fact that teachers had always been stronger than most other professionals in negotiating their working conditions and salaries with the government as their employer. So some transformation initiatives did not contribute positively to the image of teachers.
One such initiative was the government’s policy of unifying and standardising some major aspects of conditions of service for public servants, which negatively affected the image of the teaching profession. Its separateness and uniqueness is no longer pronounced, as teachers have become part of the larger public service which needs to be trimmed down to become more effective.
This standardisation was introduced through an agreement on the broadbanding of salary scales forpublic servants.
The agreement saw teachers lose their salary progression in 1996, six years earlier than the rest of the public service. This loss of salary progression was one of the sticking points leading to last month’s strike.
Another area that compromised teachers was the government’s resolve to reduce the public service from 1,1-million to 700 000 in three years, starting in 1996.
The Department of Education (DoE) took up the challenge enthusiastically and reduced the number of teachers by 60 000 by the end of 1996, reducing the teacher force from about 460 000 to the 360 000 we have today. The right-sizing process was accompanied by the redeployment exercise, which left many teachers demoralised and insecure.
Another negative result of downsizing has been the casualisation of the profession with large numbers of temporary educators. Some of the ‘temporary” teachers have been employed for more than five years and are therefore unfairly denied access to some of the benefits available to permanent educators.
A further transformational issue that has given the teaching profession a bad public image is the closure of colleges of education and the amalgamation of some of them with universities. It remains to be seen whether universities, which are not necessarily geared for teacher training, will produce better teachers than these former colleges.
The combination of these factors has given teaching a bad image which results in young people not choosing the profession.
There is a need to address these unexpected results by promoting a positive image of teaching. We at the National Teachers Union (NATU) therefore congratulate the Ministry of Education for realising the need for road shows and national teacher awards to help revamp the tarnished image of teachers.
World Teachers’ Day is also one event that helps to underline the importance of teachers in society. Our 30 000-strong teachers’ union wishes to salute all the world’s teachers, especially those in countries engulfed by conflict and poverty. Teachers must remember that the problems of education many countries face can effectively be addressed within the four walls of the classroom. We must all remember as we celebrate World Teachers’ Day that even the best curriculum is filtered through the hearts and minds of ordinary teachers.
Long live the teaching profession! Forward to quality education through quality teachers!
Eliam Biyela is the executive director of NATU (National Teachers’ Union)