The Suid-Afrikaanse Onderwysersunie (Saou) has appealed to school principals and school governing bodies to sponsor at least one intern teacher from 2010 onwards to address the acute shortage of qualified teachers in the country.
The union said while the department of education (DoE)’s has launched its own initiative in the form of the Funza Lushaka bursary scheme to attract young people to teaching, the problem is so serious it needs community involvement.
Saou calls for a “directed self-help programme to ensure that education of quality will continue to be offered into the future” and that failure to do so would result in a complete breakdown of education.
It says that the attrition rate of teacher remain much higher than the number of teachers being trained to replace them. The attrition rate – at about five percent of the 380 000 teachers in the public sector – refers to teachers retiring, resigning, passing away or being boarded on medical grounds. The pace and the numbers to replace these educators are woefully inadequate, Saou said.
The union further said its survey shows most principals struggle to fill vacancies in their schools for as long as three years because they could not find appropriately qualified candidates. It attributes these problems to, among others, the closure of teacher colleges, negative perception about the profession especially for men and difficult criteria to qualify for study grants.
Areas in which problems are experienced in recruiting quality students are in: foundation phase, English as a home language, mathematics, science and accounting, Saou said.
The union said other than the low graduation rate, other factors are to blame for the attrition rate and these include, among others:
Attractive job offers abroad, a new set of rules in the Government Employees Pension Fund, which makes it somewhat e easier for persons to take early retirement,
Illnesses that see more teachers dying or retiring due to ill-health
It proposes internship and full-time studies as the two models that can help address the critical shortage of teachers. With internship, Saou suggests, a student will study via distance learning while employed as an intern at a particular school. Full-time studies can only occur at residential universities.
Saou prefers the internship model because it costs less compared to full-time studies and could be implemented almost immediately at Unisa and North West University.
It said high and primary schools within the same geographical area could collaborate and establish a joint fund or some could independently set up their own budget to sponsor prospective students. The funded student can make arrangement with the school to pay back the bursary by rendering service for an agreed period. If the student does not pass or for some reason discontinues the course, the usual contractual conditions regarding repayment would apply.
To ensure the initiative is implemented Saou has already held discussions with Unisa and is about to open similar talks with Universities of North West, Stellenbosch, Free State and Johannesburg. The idea is to encourage more students to apply for initial teaching studies and explore possibilities of post-graduate studies for teachers who are currently teaching.
Similar approaches were made with other key structure like Federation of School Governing Bodies Association, national and provincial departments, churches and Education, Training and Development Practices Seta.
Two school principals expressed support for the call. Florida Park High School principal said it is a “wonderful idea”. “I support it absolutely because I know how bad the situation is nationally. If every school in the country we to do that we surely can go far in addressing this crisis. In fact my school has long been doing this, we basically have three system teachers in our system,” the principal said.
Yet another principal of a Welkom-based school Teto High also felt it is a worthy call but one that needs proper co-ordination. “I support it wholeheartedly. But I need to highlight two potential problems with it: very few schools serving poor communities would have resources to mentor the interns and often experienced teachers abuse them by piling a lot of work on them.”