Maths plan under fire

Education experts have expressed shock at a plan by the Department of Basic Education to train grades 8 and 9 teachers during school time.

The department wants maths teachers out of their classrooms on Mondays so that they can be trained, during school hours, to teach the subject, according to it s website.

But the National Professional Teachers' Organisation of SA said taking teachers out of the classroom for a day each week would lead to the curriculum not being completed and pupils being left unsupervised.

The organisation's deputy president, Anthea Ceresto, said: "It is evident that the department is operating on the presumption that these teachers teach only one grade and one subject.

"The reality is that teachers often teach grades 8 to 12. Some, especially in smaller schools, teach more than one subject.

"The implications of taking teachers out for a day a week are enormous. The repercussions will include loss of teaching time in other subjects, poor curriculum coverage and the quality of teaching will be affected ."

DA education spokesman Annette Lovemore said pupils start struggling with maths long before they reach Grade 8.

"In the annual national assessments, Grade4 pupils achieved just 37.3% [for maths] last year, at Grade5 it was 37.3%, and for Grade6 it was only 43.1%."

She suggested that training be focused on teachers of junior grades and not during school time.

"It is difficult to accept that this plan is anything other than an ill-thought-out pseudo solution to a troubling problem," she said.

Department spokesman Elijah Mhlanga defended the plan, which has been labelled "one plus four".

It is "one day of learning and four days of structured, effective and guided teaching", he said.

Mhlanga said : "Removing maths teachers from their schools for about 23 days in a school year for training implies that they will lose about 20 hours of teaching time a class a year."

He said a solution would be to change timetables to minimise the loss of teaching time, but Ceresto, a school principal, said this would not be practical.