The Democratic Alliance (DA) on Monday called for a constitutional amendment to grant school principals the power to appoint teachers.
Presenting DA proposals on education to the media in Cape Town, party spokesperson George Boinamo said school principals could only be held accountable for the performance of their schools if they were given the power to hire and fire teachers.
”If principals appoint teachers and results are bad, then they should bear responsibility,” he said.
The Constitution stipulated that provincial education departments were responsible for the hiring and firing of teachers.
Boinamo said there was a need for the Constitution to be amended so that the responsibility could be shifted to school principals.
”We need to amend the Constitution. Some fundamental changes must be made to the process of recruiting and appointing teachers,” he said.
Other proposals put forward by the party included the development of a system to evaluate teacher performance.
”Over the last three years, 52 schools have achieved a pass rate of less than 5%. Not even a single one of these school principals has been fired,” he said.
Teachers’ unions had made it impossible for any form of teacher evaluation to take place.
”The political activism that characterised trade-union activity during apartheid continues today, with the result that the voices of teachers’ unions, often self-interestedly protecting their own interests, drown out the voices of the children and parents,” he said. — Sapa