Less than a third of work permits intended to enable the appointment of foreign maths teachers have been taken up.
This has emerged amid mounting fears of poor mathematics results in this year’s new matric examination.
Education Minister Naledi Pandor told Parliament in September that secondary schools needed an extra 5 000 mathematics teachers — an increase of 25%.
She said the shortages were especially acute in grades 10 to 12, where, for the first time all learners have to study either pure maths or mathematical literacy.
Yet only 296 out of 1 000 permits earmarked for the appointment of foreign teachers to address the shortage in April 2007 have been allocated, Pandor told Parliament.
The permits were made available after the National Education Department reached an agreement with home affairs about their issue.
It is provincial education departments who are responsible for allocating the permits, the national department’s Deputy Director General, Firoz Patel, told the Mail & Guardian.
Provinces indicated last year that they needed about 2 000 maths, science and technology teachers from foreign countries, Patel said.
The education department contracted a recruitment agency to manage the appointment of foreign educators, but in some cases provinces still needed ”to provide the necessary guarantees of posts” for appointments to be finalised, Patel said.
There are 19 000 qualified teachers of maths for grades 10 to 12 in the country. No under- or unqualified teachers have been appointed to permanent posts since 1996, Patel said.
Such teachers still in the system are teaching lower classes.
Fears remain that there will be a record matric maths failure rate this year.
Aslam Mukadam, the coordinator of Concerned Maths Educators (CME), a Western Cape-based coalition group, believes the current maths curriculum will disadvantage the majority of matriculants this year.
Since the beginning of the year, the CME has been running a nationwide petition to suspend the format of the new maths curriculum for grade 10 to 12 learners because most educators were not equipped to teach it.
CME wants to retain the old standard-grade maths paper to accommodate learners with average mathematical abilities.
The current curriculum does not give the option of choosing between higher grade and standard grade in any subject.
”In schools where we have unqualified and untrained maths teachers, this ‘one-size-fits-all’ pure maths curriculum will seriously disadvantage the majority of middle-ground learners,” Mukadam said.
Pandor told Parliament that the education department had met representatives from countries that are willing to export their mathematics and science educators to South Africa. Last month Egypt and South Africa agreed to cooperate in the fields of higher education and scientific research.
Mukadam, however, pointed out that although the appointment of foreign teachers seemed a workable solution to the teacher shortages, foreign teachers are likely to face disciplinary problems in the classroom. He said learners have difficulty comprehending as it takes a while to get used to new accents.
”However, it is better than not having any teacher at all.
It will take a few years before the situation improves,” he said.