Schools ranked “the poorest of the poor” will be bolstered by an increase in support staff to free teachers from administrative duties so that they can spend more time on teaching and delivering quality Âeducation.
The government has allocated just less than R1-billion to employ more administrative staff such as typists, clerks, secretaries, bookkeepers, cleaners and caretakers at these schools. The money will be spent in the 2008/09 financial year.
This will provide for an extra 14 000 support staff posts.
Firoz Patel, Deputy Director General of system planning and monitoring at the department of education, says criteria used to determine the number of support staff posts are rooted in government’s commitment to uplift poorer schools.
“Depending on the number of learners, a school in ‘quintile one’ could be allocated up to nine support staff while a school in ‘quintile five’ can only qualify for a maximum of five support staff,” Patel says. This means the poorest schools will benefit the most.
Thandi Nzimande, principal of Pohopedi Primary School situated between Lenasia and Orange Farm in Gauteng, has two secretaries and one groundsman. She welcomes the government’s decision to increase support staff at poor schools.
“One of my secretaries still struggles a bit and needs further training. So having another one would help tremendously.
“There are moments where our administration staff gets really overwhelmed by the workload and as teachers we are forced to step in. And this tends to affect contact [teaching] time.
“We try to minimise the impact as far as possible by opting to work after school hours,” says Nzimande.
The groundsman cannot cope with the size of the schoolyard and Nzimande wants to hire one more person to ease his load and allow teachers to pursue what they are employed to do.
Of the 26 099 public schools in South Africa, 13 912 fit into the “very poor” category. Not only do these schools face daily issues around security, vandalism, learner and teacher absenteeism and pupil-on-pupil violence, but they lack a supportive infrastructure that will facilitate proper teaching.
In particular, learner absenteeism is a growing concern for educators. It is between 5% and 15% nationally, a joint study by the Community Agency for Social Enquiry and the Joint Education Trust has shown. The report attributes this to drug abuse, teenage pregnancies and an absence of parental involvement in the children’s education.
But learner absenteeism pales in comparison with teacher absenteeism, which is particularly chronic at poor schools where alcohol abuse, low pay, lethargy, a lack of incentives and a waning dedication to the profession are cited as the causes, an education expert says. The onus is on the principal and parents to turn this around, he says.
While the government’s R1-billion roll-out for administrative staff may be a small step towards assisting principals and teachers in carrying out their core teaching functions, it may also assist in creating an environment for teachers to want to teach and be at schools more regularly than has been reported.