The South African Democratic Teachers’ Union (Sadtu), which represents about two-thirds of all teachers in South Africa, has welcomed the fact that the threat to close poorly performing schools has been retracted.
Sadtu was responding to a threat from Gauteng education provincial minister Angie Motshekga to close dysfunctional schools.
She was joined by North West education minister Johannes Tsalepedi, who reportedly said that principals of schools that performed poorly should be axed. The national Department of Education director general, Duncan Hindle, also suggested closing dysfunctional schools.
Motshekga announced on Tuesday that the provincial government will no longer close schools.
In its New Year message, coinciding with the reopening of schools around the country this week and next week, Sadtu — led by president Willie Madisha, who is also president of the most powerful trade union federation, the Congress of South African Trade Unions — said: ”We urge provincial education [ministers] to … work with all stakeholders, to investigate specific conditions in each failing school and to continue to monitor and support all schools that are at risk of failing.”
”Closing schools, or dismissing and redeploying principals, is not practical, given the shortage of teachers and classrooms,” said the union.
Sadtu, however, emphasised that it did not support bad teachers and principals at the expense of pupils.
”The Employment of Educators Act prescribes clear procedures for dismissal on grounds of incapacity. In the event of any action being taken against specific principals, Sadtu will ensure that procedures are adhered to and that due process is followed.”
Sadtu said the Minister of Education, Naledi Pandor, had herself reported that nationwide 99 out of 114 poorly performing schools — with less than a 20% pass rate — had improved in 2006.
”The lesson is surely that poorly performing schools will benefit from monitoring and targeted support rather than simply threats.”
However, the union noted that the downside for 2006 was that the total number of schools achieving less than a 20% pass rate increased to 139.
”Again, the lesson we take from this is that we have to monitor and support all schools that are at risk of failing.”
The minister had herself alluded to failures at provincial and district levels and lack of support for schools and teachers in the field.
”In other words, we are dealing with systemic problems,” said Sadtu. ”In Limpopo, for example, there was a chronic shortage of subject specialists during 2006, with hundreds of vacancies only being advertised at the end of the year.”
Violence and anti-social behaviour in schools had been a major factor in 2006. ”We are not yet convinced that the department has developed strategies to combat this problem. Provinces appear to have been left to their own devices.”
Sadtu proposed that, ”as a minimum”, basic security needs to be provided, such as fences, gates, locks and security guards at every school. In addition, stakeholders including teachers, departments, parents, school managers, the community and pupils should be involved in a campaign to combat antisocial behaviour.
An ongoing process or research to identify underlying causes of the problem of antisocial behaviour needs to be developed to combat ”its manifestations”.
Sadtu, with 230 000 members — out of a teaching corps of 360 000 — is the second largest union in South Africa and the largest union in the public service. It reported that there are about 12-million pupils at South African schools attending 28 000 schools. — I-Net Bridge