Is Pandor panicking?

Plans to introduce teachers’ licensing by the Department of Education (DoE) are doomed to failure, judging by the reaction of teachers’ unions.

Minister of Education Naledi Pandor floated the idea during a meeting in Cape Town as ‘part of steps by the Department of Education to improve the quality of education in South Africa”.

But three unions — the Suid-­Afrikaanse Onderwysersunie (Saou), the National Professional Teachers’ Organisation of South Africa (Naptosa) and the South African Democratic Teachers’ Union (Sadtu) — rejected the proposal.

Not only are they angry that the minister did not consult them before she went public on the issue, they have raised concerns based on the department’s inability to implement similar initiatives in the past.

Department spokesperson Lunga Ngqengelele said he does not understand what the fuss is all about as nothing is cast in stone. He said this is a consideration by the department to explore ways of licensing teachers ‘possibly every five years”.

Ngqengelele said the minister ‘went on to explain that the issue is at its concept stage and was being discussed within the department. The exact way in which it is going to work is what the department is grappling with,” he said.

This comes at the time when DoE is still at loggerheads with teachers’ unions about the implementation of integrated quality management system (IQMS).

At the heart of the fall-out between the unions and the DoE is a 1% salary increment which teachers should get after they have been appraised. But some provinces failed to carry out this obligation and the DoE refuses to effect the increase.

The unions argue that failure by DoE to assess teachers cannot be used as an excuse to deny teachers their salary increase.

The unions support the idea of teacher development and quality education, but they have grave reservations about the capacity of the department to carry out this ‘complex” licensing task.

The unions also raised concern about the manner in which the DoE sprung this issue on the public without consulting them. It is also felt that this idea is nothing new, as it is based on the same principles and values as the IQMS.

Saou’s president, Steve Roux, said the minister should have ‘discussed the matter with educator unions prior to making a public statement”.

Roux said this would have enabled the education community to speak with a unified voice. ‘To spring such a surprise in the public media puts unions in an awkward position as serious questions must now be raised publicly on the feasibility of such an important matter,” he said.

Naptosa’s Dave Balt said their concerns relate to ‘how this will be done and who will manage and control the licensing”. He said if not handled properly, this ‘could have a negative impact on the morale of teachers and add stress to an already stressed profession”.

Balt said to date, ‘there is very little evidence that provincial departments have been able to provide the kind of training that was required” in terms of the IQMS. He said the question then relates to the ‘un-licencing’ or deregistration of teachers who have not been able to maintain their professional development because of departmental incapacity.

Balt said licensing would not be reasonable at this stage unless there is ‘provision of individualised opportunities for development in order to enable teachers to upgrade their qualifications or competencies”.

The most vocal critic was Thulas Nxesi, Sadtu’s general secretary. He said Pandor is ‘panicking” because she has nothing but vague plans and empty promises to show and therefore turns to gimmickry.

Nxesi also took issue with Pandor for raising the idea of teacher licensing at a breakfast meeting with the press instead of with the profession because she knew it was a ‘half-baked notion”.

He said the DoE simply ‘does not have the personnel and capacity to establish a credible national inspectorate to license 360 000 teachers — more so in the face of resistance from the profession”.

Nxesi argued that the previous ministers of education have already laid a basis for mechanisms to assess and develop teachers and that it is for Pandor to ‘present a report for public debate [on these] and to commit more resources for rapid implementation”.

The first minister of education in the democratic South Africa, Sibusiso Bengu, introduced the development appraisal system. This was followed by whole school evaluation during Kader Asmal’s tenure.

Nxesi said instead of Pandor building on these, she opts for licences because ‘it is cheaper to issue licences than to address the underlying need for teacher development”. He said this also points to the DoE’s lack of both resources and political will to implement these plans.

What the unions say

Sadtu

• The DoE must consult the profession and other stakeholders and rely less on consultants.
• The current IQMS must be reviewed to see if it needs to be streamlined, de-linked from pay progression and what problems there are with implementation.
• Fast-track the national debate on teacher development and commit more resources to a national strategy and plan.
• This must include the conversion of district offices as hubs of teacher development and support.
• Provide relevant training and skills geared to the needs of the individual teachers, the demands of the curriculum and real conditions that teachers face in schools.

Naptosa

• The DoE must not see teacher development training as one-size-fits-all but recognise that teachers have different developmental needs. Training should focus on the individual teacher.
• Before licensing or unlicensing can take place, provinces and particularly rural districts will have to show evidence that they have the capacity and resources to provide developmental needs for all teachers in all grades in all learning areas.
• As both the DoE and the South African Council of Educators do not have the capacity to manage and control the process , a decision would have to be taken on this, and the necessary structures should be established and tested first.
• Licensing is but one aspect of the recommendations in the Ministerial Committee on Teacher Education and there is no agreement on this as yet, therefore more discussion is necessary.
• The parties must discuss the possibility of licensing becoming a punitive measure and the consequences related to it.
• In order to ensure fairness and consistency across the system, decisions about re-licensing and unlicensing would have to be done on a case-by-case basis.
• The process will have to serve as an incentive to teachers and possibly include imposing some kind of sanction for those who do not take their professional development seriously.

SAOA

• An independent and objective body should undertake the evaluation and licensing, otherwise its credibility will be seriously questioned.
• To evaluate and license a workforce of 360 000 on an ongoing basis means additional persons will have to be employed and trained, with resulting costs and time restrictions.
• More thought should be given to the database of substantial information on every educator and the maintenance related to this. Currently there is a problem with the database for the registration of educators.
• There must be clarity with regard to the manner in which remedial actions will be undertaken against educators whose performance does not comply with the minimum standards.
• A decision will have to be taken on whether evaluation results should be treated as public information. Schools use this information to attract more learners, a teacher would want privacy, while parents and learners have a right to get relevant information to decide on the suitability and quality of a school.
• The minister must make it clear if education managers and administrators are also going to comply with the requirements so that they can provide guidance and leadership — or whether this will apply to teachers only.