Eight years after the Department of Education defined conditions of service for adult literacy teachers, they may be on the brink of receiving formal contracts. Criteria that formalise and improve work conditions for adult basic education and training (Abet) teachers have been agreed on.
The document will go to provincial heads of education this month, said the national department’s David Diale, chief education specialist in the Abet directorate. The provincial heads will decide whether they can sustain the financial implications of the proposals. If so, the agreement will be tabled at the Education Labour Relations Council. The budget for Abet stands at less than 1% of the total education budget.
Educators have been “frustrated by promises over the years”, said Farrell Hunter, national coordinator of the Adult Learning Network. “Why should they work on a minimalist basis?”
Most of South Africa’s 14 500 Abet educators work on an hourly or casual basis, leaving them without the job security and benefits school teachers generally enjoy. Among many problems have been perpetually late payments. The proposals, if implemented, mean educators would be paid monthly.
The educators now earn between R60 and R130 an hour, depending on qualifications, said Archie Mokanane, chairperson of the Council of Adult Training and Learning in Gauteng. Those most affected by poor service conditions are the learners, he said. “In a three-month term, learners are taught by three or more teachers.” The number of illiterate adults has increased by roughly 500 000 in the past 10 years and about eight million adults have less than a grade seven.
Ivor Baatjes of the University of KwaZulu-Natal’s Centre for Adult Education said a central mystery is why it has taken so long to address adult educators’ conditions of service. Baatjes was employed by the Department of Education and played a central role in drawing up policy on service conditions in 1997. He pointed out that, in July 1997, all provincial premiers were told to ask their education ministers to draw up budgets for educator posts — but none did so.