This was revealed by the South African Democratic Teachers’ Union during a media briefing on the non-filling of teacher posts in Durban on Thursday.
The teacher union has accused the provincial education department of failing to quickly attend to teacher shortages in schools across the province.
SADTU’s provincial secretary‚ Nomarashiya Caluza‚ blamed the situation on the redistribution of teachers as a result of a post provisioning norms process which the union has fought against for many years.
“Over 2‚800 educators are affected and shall have their family lives disrupted. The employer has not developed requisite capacity to deal with this exercise yearly and the situation deteriorates and collapses in the hands of officials expected to be efficient‚” she said.
She said teacher shortages had resulted in overcrowded classes while the department was busy redistributing teachers endlessly.
“Educators practically carry the burden of staff shortage as they have to be content with overcrowded classes while the employer is frantically redistributing educators endlessly.”
She said the union had raised these issues with the KwaZulu-Natal education department during a meeting with the Education Labour Relations Council staffing committee meeting on Wednesday.
The union has called for the department to implement:
- The collective agreement on the transfer of teachers for operational requirements
- The circular explaining the procedure of redistribution of teachers to ease congestion and clear backlogs
- To minimise unnecessary movement of educators and for schools to declare all retiring educators or those leaving their employ within six months for purposes of retention of other educators
- To make a list of posts in schools from which teachers must select their preferred places of work in line with the collective agreement.
-TMG Digital/TimesLIVE
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