DR SHEETAL BHOOLA
The Department of Basic Education has recently announced that they are forced to minimise budgets per province because of the vast financial deficits.
Fewer teachers in South African schools negatively impact the quality of teaching and learning, forcing pupils to sit in crowded classrooms. The increased ratio of pupils per teacher can be detrimental in South African children's pre-primary and primary school phases.
At this juncture, children learn through observation to describe and associate feelings with behaviour, interaction, thoughts and events at school. They learn to form relationships at this age through dependency. These children can quickly feel insecure when they rely on one teacher rather than two for support, nurturing and learning throughout the day at school.
Learners who attend schools in impoverished and rural areas in South Africa are also placed under immense pressure to cope and learn under dire and difficult circumstances. Some of these schools need more fundamental infrastructure, such as appropriate sanitation facilities and small classrooms that are expected to seat far too many learners. Within these circumstances, there is little support or consideration regarding how the teachers will cope.
The recent announcement of intended retrenchments within schools across Gauteng, KwaZulu-Natal and comparison to the schooling curriculum, inadequate infrastructure and puts immense pressure on teachers employed within these schools.
While the focus may be on reducing national expenditure, has adequate consideration been given to fraudulent and corrupt staff behaviour in this sector? The recent decision to retrench teachers will only magnify the number of teacher vacancies that have been identified within each province since 2021.
KwaZulu-Natal has the highest number of recorded teacher vacancies at approximately 7 000. This statistic excluded the number of teachers the department is yet to retrench. The Western Cape and the Gauteng provinces currently have approximately 8 500 teacher vacancies, and these statistics exclude the teacher retrenchments that is yet to come.
Despite the planned reduction because of budget restraints, there seems to be a a scarcity of teachers who are equipped with the capability to teach mathematics, information technology, sciences and literacy as well as teachers who can teach in African languages in the foundation phases of pre-primary and primary school.
Recent scholarly research (Aldoori, 2023) indicated that when children learn through their native language, they can grasp core skills and concepts quicker, which then lends itself to the learning of other development skills and even a second language.
The scarcity of teachers has become a global challenge. The Unesco report has indicated that sub-Saharan Africa needs approximately 6 million teachers should they want to continue to be aligned with universal primary educational standards by the year 2030.
In addition, it was also recorded that by 2025, South Africa requires at least 400 000 teachers to be assigned to schools and in long-term positions. Approximately 400 000 teachers are employed to teach around 13 million learners. Over the last decade, there has been an increase in the number of children who enrol in schools.
Tertiary educational institutions and teacher training colleges need to graduate the adequate number of teachers required for the South African schooling system. The more significant challenge lies in the inability to pay salaries to these teachers, who are very much employable and needed for a sound educational system to develop.
Teacher salaries have also not been increasing, and the recognition and value that teachers bring to our society are often overlooked and undermined. Teachers are forced to work in challenging environments, especially those employed in schools in the rural areas of South Africa.
There has been a noted increase in teachers leaving South Africa's public educational system annually. Some teachers will communicate that even the incentives for long-term service are inadequate and remain minimal despite the rising costs of necessities in South Africa, which is driven by inflation. The annual number of teachers that leave the profession presently exceeds the number of teachers that enter the system.
Many teachers are close to retirement age and in their 50s, so the Department of Basic Education should embark on a strategy to ensure that retiring teachers can be replaced shortly. There has yet to be any communication shared by the department that describes and indicates the succession plan for retiring teachers, yet the focus has only been on retrenchments.
Has adequate thought been given to the teachers who remain behind in schools where they will lose fellow staff members? Are these teachers going to be aided in any way? Is it expected that the remaining teachers have to absorb classes with more learners?
In recent years, we have witnessed the integration of immigrant teachers into the schooling system and the growing prevalence of homeschooling and distance learning among South Africans. Some immigrant teachers have taught scarce subjects such as mathematics, physical science and information technologies.
Although the arrangement may be well facilitated, we need to consider long-term strategies, as many foreign national teachers may leave South Africa permanently at one stage.
We need to assess the present situation accurately and start developing a strategy to deal with the teacher shortages and the approach to sustain universal education standards. With a planned structure and development programme, we can meet this challenge accordingly.
Dr. Sheetal Bhoola is a lecturer and researcher at the University of Zululand, and the director at StellarMaths (Sunningdale).
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