In full flight with a group of about 70 enthusiastic teachers and principals from across the Cape Peninsula, I led a workshop last week on ethical leadership in education using familiar cases for discussion. At some point in the interactive session, I asked this of the assembled educators: how many of you use your own money to buy classroom supplies for your learners? A majority of the hands went up among the educators. My heart sank.
Think about this for a moment. A level one teacher, the lowest paid and least experienced, can earn about R13,000 per month, according to one analysis. A school governing body appointment could earn even less in a working-class institution where the teacher is desperate to earn something while the school is desperate to fill a post. Once this teacher has paid the rent on a small flat, the car instalments, food and other amenities, the Edgars account, the petrol and so forth, there is little left for anything else. “I can no longer buy basic supplies for my children now that I have a bond,” shared a senior teacher.
The provincial department of education simply does not provide enough funds. But since you’re the teacher and the children need those essentials (paper, pens, equipment, texts and so on) you close your eyes, dig into your own pocket and make those necessary purchases for the sake of your charges.
It would help of course if you worked at one of the former white or elite schools where those costs are easily transferred to middle class or wealthy parents using a powerful instrument at hand: increase the school fees. The teacher in such a school would never be expected to dig into their personal bank accounts to keep the basic operations of their classroom going.
When I looked across the hall where I was doing the workshop, I examined the faces of the many teachers with raised hands. There was a sadness mixed with a hint of surprise: did you not know, Mr Workshop Facilitator, we’ve been doing this all our professional lives? Of course I knew that. I did the same thing as a young biology teacher buying specimens for microscopic investigation, but those were the apartheid years; I expected such dereliction of duty by the white government. I was foolish enough to expect something better under a democratic government.
Make no mistake what teachers are actually doing in 2023: using their meagre salaries to pay for what their government was responsible for in the first place. Makes you wonder why we even bother to pay taxes.
Make no mistake what teachers are actually doing in 2023: using their meagre salaries to pay for what their government was responsible for in the first place. Makes you wonder why we even bother to pay taxes.
Let me be clear: it is a complete and utter disgrace that a teacher in a working-class school, or any school for that matter, should pay for basic school supplies out of their own pockets.
I felt a deep admiration for South African teachers during last Thursday’s workshop. To have the heart to buy school materials for other parents’ children, without any chance of compensation demands respect. To know you are placing your personal finances in jeopardy with this kind of generosity requires acknowledgment.
The next day our own Piet Promises, President Ramaphosa, said hardly anything in his state of the nation address about school education except for toilets and this muddle: “The department of basic education is streamlining the requirements for ECD (early childhood development) centres to access support and enable thousands more to receive subsidies from government.” I have studied education policy talk long enough to know this complex sentence is a nonsense statement. “Streamlining requirements”? Apart from grammatical clumsiness, this is pure poppycock. The promise to fund ECD was made before and still nothing has happened, except for looming new budget cuts for education that affects teachers’ pockets.
Sadly, the story of teachers doing what government fails to do is becoming a feature of the country. Farmers fixing potholes on broken roads. Volunteers playing traffic cop at robots that don’t work. Households buying private security to patrol their streets. Non-governmental organisations installing running water in dry townships. Companies replacing pit latrine toilets in schools.
We used to be clear about our respective roles in society. Government provides supplies for education operations. Teachers teach. Principals lead. Learners learn. Those roles are now scrambled with government failing in its basic duty of equipping schools with the material means of education.
We must do two things. One, put the pressure back where it belongs and force government to deliver on its mandate to adequately fund schools. Two, we must hold up the arms of teachers who under enormous strain do way more than their professional training asked of them — to do what government fails to do.
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