The National Professional Teachers’ Organisation of South Africa (Naptosa) shares the Department of Education’s concerns about dysfunctional schools, it said on Monday.
”It would be necessary to first profile these [dysfunctional] schools in order to determine exactly where the problems lie,” Naptosa president Dave Balt said.
Naptosa believed there would be different reasons for the dysfunction at different schools and that it would be more useful to assist schools to fix the problems they had rather than closing them down.
”Closing down schools does not solve the problems around dysfunctionality. It merely hides problems, which will resurface elsewhere at a later stage,” Balt said.
The Eastern Cape’s intention to withhold bonuses of principals of under-performing schools is not acceptable, especially if there is no evidence to show that the principals are at fault, he said.
A number of factors — such as teachers who teach a subject for which they are not qualified, levels of malnutrition of pupils and the number of pregnancies among girls in the classroom — make schools dysfunctional.
Detailed and specific information about schools will enable education departments to implement specific interventions in order to bring about improvements that will make schools become functional. — Sapa