Teachers at a Pretoria high school were on strike over a staff shortage and unfavourable working conditions, a member of the school’s governing body said on Wednesday.
”There are 15 teachers to 1 050 pupils at Lotus Gardens Secondary school and the working conditions there are unacceptable,” said governing body member Marti Benolio.
Benolio said the Gauteng education department had promised to send four more teachers to the school to ease the workload, but none had arrived.
”The MEC Angelina Motshekga does not even know what is going on here. I have told the teachers who came to me asking for advice to keep on with the strike,” Benolio said.
”There will be a meeting this afternoon [Wednesday] between myself and the site committee of Lotus Gardens Secondary to discuss their grievances with the department and to find a way forward,” said Daya Chetty, chairperson of the South African Democratic Teachers Union’s (Sadtu) Laudium branch.
Chetty said he had spoken to Moss Nkonyana, a senior manager of the education department’s Tshwane North district about the situation at the school.
”Mr Nkonyana informed me that this was not a unique problem as the districts received direction from the provincial education department as to how many teachers would be sent to which schools each year,” Chetty said.
He said the education department had begun bussing pupils from other areas to the school so that they could be taught in English.
”When the department informed the school they would be doing this, they promised to provide mobile classrooms and more teachers to assist with the extra pupils. The mobile classrooms arrived but no extra teachers did,” he said.
Chetty said he was told there were classes at the school with up to 60 children to a teacher while labour law stated teachers were to teach no more than 35 children per classroom.
The Gauteng education department could not be reached for comment. – Sapa