Many Eastern Cape schools once again started the school year with chronic teacher shortages despite a high court order that required the national and provincial departments to fill all vacant teaching and non-teaching posts at schools.

Last year the departments agreed to comply with an Eastern Cape High Court order to fill all vacant posts temporarily by September. The positions were to be made permanent by December last year.

They were ordered to reimburse schools that had been forced to pay the salaries of temporary teachers in approved posts from their own funds last year.

Grahamstown Legal Resources Centre director Sarah Sephton said yesterday that only a small number of temporary teachers had been appointed to fill vacant posts and very few of the posts had been made permanent by December, as required by the order.

"Schools' governing bodies have not been reimbursed a cent."

Sephton said special-needs schools were in a particularly dire position.

Port Elizabeth's Cape Recife High School, whose pupils include children with severe physical and learning disabilities, was 12 teachers and eight therapists short of its establishment of 50.

Neither the national nor the provincial department had commented at the time of going to press.