Absent teachers harm kids

Teachers who spend more time in the staffroom than in the classroom are to blame for the country's education crisis, Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga said.

"Research after research has shown that 41% of time is used in class, especially by teachers in rural areas, and we don't know what the rest of the time is spent on but it is clear that teachers spend most of their time in staffrooms," she said at the 93rd National Teachers' Union annual conference in Empangeni, northern KwaZulu-Natal.

Motshekga said in one case education officials found that teachers had taught only 50 of 150 lessons.

She attributed this to lack of managerial capabilities in the principals in charge of the day-to-day running of schools.

"There are monitoring tools that are there but principals are not utilising them. Actually some principals are not qualified to be principals and in most cases are found not to know what to do themselves. Effective schools are run by effective principals and an effective principal will not allow teachers to sit in the staffroom," she said.

According to the analysis of Annual National Assessment results, the lack of foundation-phase skills was so serious that Grade 4 pupils could not even write their own names, Motshekga said.

"According to ANA, we found that, by Grade 3, and up to Grade 6, many learners could not write properly and legibly. Many learners performed poorly because they could not read or follow instructions like 'fill in the missing word' or 'tick the correct answer'. There was a lack of basic vocabulary. On the whole, learners displayed a serious lack of fundamental literacy skills across all the grades but more so from Grade 4 to Grade 6. There were instances where written outputs from learners who were already in Grade 6 could hardly be expected from learners in Grade 1."

Motshekga said the high university failure and drop-out rates were due to poor basic education.

"As a country, we have a 10% repeat rate, while in [other] Southern African countries it's 5% and globally it's a mere 1%. This is due to a poor foundation at early grades. It catches up with learners at some stage."

Motshekga said it was crucial for primary school pupils to be taught in their home languages because it would help them understand the instructions better.

She added that teachers were right to turn back pupils who arrived late at school.

"As much as we say teachers must be in class teaching, learners should also be in class because teachers can't teach themselves. It is better for a teacher to compromise a few that come late than the whole class and also, it's not [teachers'] burden to ensure that learners come to school on time. That is the parents' job," she said.