Education experts have warned that the failure by the KwaZulu-Natal education department to fill 5,151 administrative and staff vacancies this year will “severely compromise” the provision of quality education.
According to a document titled “Estimates of provincial revenue and expenditure”, the department indicated 5,151, 6,979 and 4,298 vacant posts respectively remain unaffordable in 2023/24, 2024/25 and 2025/26 despite a total of more than R4bn in additional funding from the National Treasury for the three years.
The document stated the 2021/22 budget cut (R11.5bn) “still renders 5,151 filled and vacant posts unaffordable in 2023/24 despite the additional funding”.
The department of basic education confirmed that up until the end of last month, there were 30,350 teacher vacancies countrywide, including 6,185 in KwaZulu-Natal.
The 6,185 vacancies in the province included 3,571 teachers, 1,321 heads of department, 425 deputy principals and 868 principal posts.
It was also revealed in another document presented to parliament on Wednesday during a briefing by the department of basic education that KwaZulu-Natal only managed to employ 277 of the 681 teacher graduates last year who were recipients of government’s Funza Lushaka bursary scheme.
While teacher vacancies stood at 30,350, the department of basic education also confirmed on Friday that 6,533 educators in SA had been declared as “excess” or surplus at their schools either because of a change in pupil enrolment or changes to the curriculum and grading of a school.
Nndi Madzena, chair of the National Professional Teachers’ Organisation of SA (Naptosa) in Gauteng, said a teacher could remain “in excess” for five years “if there’s no post matching their profile”.
The number of excess teachers include:
• Eastern Cape: 1,584
• KwaZulu-Natal: 1,500
• Limpopo: 1,230
•Free State: 837; and
• Gauteng: 497
Basic education department spokesperson Elijah Mhlanga said educators declared as excess implied a school has more educators than allocated as its share from the basket of posts in the province.
“Educators who are declared as such are fully utilised and included in the timetable pending their transfer to schools where there are vacancies that match their profile.”
He said one of the reasons for the lengthy delay in placing affected educators at other schools was being able to find a post matching their qualifications.
“Another reason is the unavailability of a suitable vacancy within a reasonable distance from where the educator resides.”
He said governing bodies also needed to recommend the teacher for the vacancy “and may decide he or she does not meet their school’s requirements”.
Mhlanga said “it is accepted that not all educators will be placed, but those that cannot remain gainfully employed at the school where they were found to be in addition to the staff establishment”.
Western Cape education spokesperson Bronagh Hammond said all surplus teachers “are optimally used in classrooms and in head and district offices in supporting specific programmes and initiatives”.
Northern Cape education department spokesperson Sydney Stander said it usually took more than six months to move the educator to a vacant post.
“The geographical nature of the province does not allow easy relocation of excess educators from one school to another.”
It means we have skilled people who cannot be put to good use. Are they being used in their areas of training, speciality and strength?
— Prof Chika Sehoole of the University of Pretoria
But Prof Chika Sehoole, dean of the education faculty at the University of Pretoria, said the inability to place them at schools was unfortunate and “a waste of human resources”.
“It means we have skilled people who cannot be put to good use. Are they being used in their areas of training, speciality and strength?”
Commenting on KwaZulu-Natal’s decision not to fill vacant posts, he said they must be filled “to ensure a certain standard in the delivery of services”.
Prof Mary Metcalfe, of the University of Johannesburg, said: “I do not doubt that teachers declared in excess can be usefully deployed at schools where they currently are because our learner-teacher ratios are at the highest now compared to the past 10 years.”
Prof Loyiso Jita, dean of the education faculty at the University of the Free State, said having excess teachers in a school is wasteful, especially when some schools had more than 60 pupils per class.
He described as “tragic” the non-filling of vacant posts in KwaZulu-Natal, adding: “Saving money by not filling vacant positions is a false saving. You accumulate money, but you lose out on your people, students, teachers and a whole generation whose human rights and dignity can never be returned.”
His colleague, Prof Labby Ramrathan from the University of KwaZulu-Natal, said: “There are huge concerns about the quality of educational provisioning and quality teaching in KZN and the inability of filling these vacancies severely compromises quality education.”
He said teachers in schools in the province where there are vacancies will have to take class sizes “far beyond the current large class sizes”, and teaching, learning and assessments will be severely compromised.
Thirona Moodley, CEO of Naptosa for KwaZulu-Natal, said teachers were expected to teach for seven hours a day and were also supposed to be given non-teaching periods to prepare lessons.
“But because of the shortage of educators in their schools, they teach every single period of the day. Some of them are not even qualified to teach these subjects so what kind of quality education is happening?”
This will result in teacher fatigue and burnout. Classes will probably be combined and the net effect is that the teacher will not be able to deliver quality education
— Imran Keeka, DA education spokesperson in KZN
Describing the non-filling of vacant posts in the province as “catastrophic”, Imran Keeka, the DA’s education spokesperson in KwaZulu-Natal, said learning and teaching will be “massively compromised” because of the increased teacher workload.
“This will result in teacher fatigue and burnout. Classes will probably be combined, and the net effect is that the teacher will not be able to deliver quality education.”
The KwaZulu-Natal education department did not respond to media queries.
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