It is a well-known indictment of our current administration that very often, the right hand doesn’t know what the left is doing.
The best intentions are at times thwarted by a disconnect between one group and another due to a lack of synergy, poor communication and planning, or just plain short-sightedness.
The latest case in point involves the appointment of teachers who, as we well know, provide a crucial service.
Provincial education departments failed to employ almost 1,400 new teachers who received government funding to complete their studies, according to figures provided to parliament this week by the department of basic education.
These are teachers the department has invested time and money in, ostensibly in a noble bid to improve the quality of education in our schools.
The department was presenting its performance for the third quarter of the 2022/23 financial year.
The biggest culprit was KwaZulu-Natal, which only managed to place 277 of the 681 Funza Lushaka bursary recipients by the end of last year.
The Eastern Cape only employed 393 of the 699 teacher graduates, while Mpumalanga placed 228 out of the 417 in schools. This is despite many schools in these provinces being desperate for more teaching staff.
Basic education department director-general Mathanzima Mweli told parliament the almost 1,394 unplaced teachers might not have been placed “because we don’t need them”.
He said experts were saying there was no shortage of teachers in SA, but that this was “relative” to specific needs and that the department closely monitored the placement of teachers at schools. But not closely enough, it seems.
What’s the point of government investing time and money in producing teachers it can’t employ in the end?
Two weeks ago, the Gauteng health department said that due to budgetary constraints, most of the 60 doctors who had received state bursaries to study medicine could not be placed.
Could it not have steered these students into another line of study? One that would offer them a better chance of a job on the other side? Or is it a box-ticking exercise to use up funds just because they are there?
A similar scenario has played out in the health sector.
Two weeks ago, the Gauteng health department said due to budgetary constraints, most of the 60 doctors who had received state bursaries to study medicine could not be placed.
The department was forced into the unfortunate position of having to release these graduates from their community service obligations and give them permission to seek employment in the private sector.
What a wasted opportunity and huge loss for our state health facilities, which are crippled by staff shortages.
Even in an economy in which joblessness was almost non-existent, it would be irresponsible of government to invest money into training people up, only to leave them sitting at home once they have graduated.
But in an economy in which unemployment remains staggeringly high, it borders on criminal.
The problem is not limited to government bursaries. Each year, many students graduate with degrees that are unlikely to get them full-time employment. If only someone had advised them more wisely when they registered.
Figures released by the department of social development during a parliamentary portfolio committee meeting earlier this month revealed that the number of unemployed youth with tertiary qualifications seeking access to the social relief of distress grant has increased by nearly 20% in the past five months.
The department said 716,200 graduates with tertiary qualifications had applied for the R350 social relief of distress (SRD) grant at the end of January. This is an increase of about 116,200, compared to the last reported figure of 600,000 in August 2022.
Predicting a department’s needs several years in advance is admittedly not an exact science, but there are certain trends that do not change on an annual basis. However, accurate forecasting is critical.
The latest government bursary bungles indicate that the officials dishing out the funding do not always know where the greatest needs lie. There should be way more synergy with their colleagues in the field to better identify real-life needs.
And while they’re about it, perhaps government should dish out a few bursaries for actuarial science, statistics or economics so they can employ a few graduates to mathematically plot where departments’ greatest staffing needs will be in four years’ time. Because clearly they don’t have any good ones at the moment.
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