/ 27 August 2010

Not enough data to dock pay

As the government prepares to dock the salaries of striking teachers within two weeks, an M&G investigation suggests the data necessary to do so equitably and accurately could be seriously flawed.

The M&G has a copy of a 15-page document titled Strike Management Plan drawn up by the national department of basic education. This is intended to enable government to apply the “no work, no pay” rule “consistently”, according to the document.

The plan refers to the “total shutdown” of a number of schools during the 2007 strike and describes the “specific processes” managers and heads of schools “must put … in place to ensure the continuous functioning of their directorates and institutions”.

The processes include forms (included in the 15-page document) that school managers and district officials have to fill in daily, including:

  • A “record of attendance” with teachers’ names, Persal (that is, salary) numbers, “level/rank”, “time in”, “time out” and teachers’ signatures;
  • A “record of participation in industrial action” (that is, “unauthorised absences during industrial action”), with names, Persal numbers and “level/rank”;
  • A “record of attendance … to be completed by all educators/officials who are not on strike but who reported to the nearest police station; this requires the signature of the police station commissioner”; and
  • An “incident report”, including “damage to property”, “assaults, threats of violence and intimidation”.

Managers are also required to sign forms identifying areas they consider “volatile”, that is, “not safe … for educators and/or learners due to the actions/behaviours of the striking employees”.

The plan was distributed to all provincial labour managers, provinces, districts and circuits on July 21, departmental spokesperson Granville Whittle told the M&G.

Last Friday, the department said: “All teachers who have joined the industrial action will have their salaries docked in the next salary run, which for most teachers will be September 15. All provincial departments have put the necessary measures in place to ensure that they can make the necessary deductions with immediate effect.”

This week, the department told the M&G that while “there have been some difficulties [in collecting the necessary data on absent teachers] on the whole, we are confident that we will be able to implement the policy [of no work, no pay]”.

But several school principals around the country contacted by the M&G this week said they had never heard of or received this 15-page plan. Some said they had received it but were not implementing it (for a variety of reasons); and some were attempting to implement it but with mixed results.

School governing bodies described to the M&G the difficulties the schools under their watch were having in filing the required daily reports. And the country’s largest teacher representative body, the South African Democratic Teachers’ Union (Sadtu), said it had not heard of the document.

Two principals in the North West (one in Zeerust and another in Mafikeng) and two in Limpopo did not know about the document and said they were therefore clearly not implementing the steps the M&G described to them. “We will probably still receive it,” said one Limpopo principal.

A Free State principal said he had received the document and was sending reports to the department daily.

In Paul Roux in the Free State, another principal said he didn’t have the plan and hadn’t heard of it, a statement echoed by a principal in the Free State’s Thabo Mofutsanyana district.

In the Prince Albert area of the Western Cape a principal said he was implementing the plan, but expressed unhappiness that the department had not consulted him about it.

In Eshowe, KwaZulu-Natal, a principal said reports were being faxed daily to the district office, but these were not being received because the office was closed.

Another Limpopo principal said he had the plan, but there was nothing to report to the district because there were no teachers or pupils. All the principals who spoke to the M&G asked that the newspaper not use their names.

The Federation of Governing Bodies of South African Schools said some of its member schools were having problems reporting because some district offices were closed. “This means we cannot get the reports to the department as the document requires,” said its spokesperson Jaco Deacon.

Deacon said some of their schools were shut because of intimidation and not because teachers did not want to work.

Roger Millson, the executive officer of the Gauteng chapter of the Governing Body Foundation, said the foundation knew about the strike management plan, but its implementation had been “overtaken by strike events”.

Mzimkhulu Hlalukana, the secretary general of the National Association of Parents in School Governance, said some of his organisation’s member schools had also had difficulty following the plan.

Sadtu president Thobile Ntola said the union’s national office was unaware of the strike management plan. The union was not consulted and so the plan would not be implemented.

“We know nothing of this plan and we will discuss it after the dispute has been settled,” Ntola told the M&G.

This week, the department said 185 307 teachers were absent on Tuesday. But it did not answer the M&G‘s questions about how many schools and provincial departments had submitted the required data.

On Thursday, the Eastern Cape education department told the M&G it had been instructed to refer all media inquiries about the strike to the national department.

Charles Phahlane, the Gauteng education department’s head of communication, confirmed that “no work, no pay” would be implemented.

“Employees don’t want to experience salary deductions and are not keen to monitor their colleagues, so they may plead ignorance of the process,” he said.

“We are working towards effecting deductions in September, however prior to this, we are analysing the efficacy of the data in our possession and we have not yet concluded this analysis,” he said.

None of the other seven departments answered the questions on data collection emailed to them by the M&G.