Pupils cry out for more maths

A group of Ekurhuleni matric pupils who have not had a maths teacher for more than two months have taken their frustrations to the Gauteng department of education.

Tardy replacement of teachers is becoming a common problem, an education expert said, citing a shortage of maths teachers.

Five Grade 12 pupils of Eden Park Secondary School, in Alberton, appealed to the department for the assignment of a maths teacher after, they said, the failure of their requests for a meeting with their principal.

A parent said the principal had told parents and pupils: "It is beyond my control."

"How come the principal brushes such a serious issue away and does not want to account for what he is doing?" the parent asked.

The school's mathematics teacher, who taught grades 10, 11 and 12, last gave a lesson on February 4 and since then there has been no maths teaching.

Parents and pupils are worried that they will not be able to produce mid-year maths results, which are needed to secure places at universities for Grade 12s.

"Our biggest fear is that we have only 26 days before the mid-year exams and will not have any marks for maths," a pupil said.

"This is our future. Over the past months we had no maths lessons, no homework, nothing," he said.

Department spokesman Phumla Sekhonyane said: "It is completely unacceptable that learners in senior grades have not received tuition in mathematics."

Confirming that the maths teacher had been absent because of illness, she said: "The school has attempted unsuccessfully to put contingency measures in place. The head office will now intervene to ensure that there is a substitute teacher when the schools reopen in May."

She said the pupils would be asked to attend extra lessons.

Doron Isaacs, deputy general secretary of NGO Equal Education, said school governing bodies and parents should be trained to prevent such situations.

"It should not take two or three months for a problem to surface. You would expect that no principal would allow the situation to last so long. The department of education should have temporary teachers," Isaacs said.

He said the situation was not unique to Eden Park.

"This morning I had a meeting at the Western Cape education department. As I was entering the building there was a big group of learners from Sizimisele Secondary School, in Khayelitsha. They are in a very same situation. About five of their teachers are missing. The teachers had not been paid so they stopped working."

He said Equal Education had been researching teacher numbers but struggled to get data from education departments.

"There is a shortage of teachers in subjects such as maths," he said.