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The Western Cape Education Department’s handling of this situation is palpably disastrous. How can such a significant number – 2 500 teachers – be let go in one fell swoop?
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In local communities across the Cape Flats, we already face overcrowded schools and widespread hunger, with teachers battling to educate in harsh conditions.
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Political and civil society must oppose this proposed teacher retrenchment, slated to start in January 2025.
by PROFESSOR ASLAM FATAAR
Did we think that two decades of government corruption, an economic meltdown exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, and the decrepit stewardship of the country’s resources would leave ordinary citizens unscathed?
The impacts of these issues have been deeply felt across communities, especially in their experiences with health, welfare, food security and educational services. Poverty is now endemic and widespread, with communities teetering on the edge of survival and suffering from depressive conditions.
The recent brazen announcement by the Western Cape Education Department of retrenching 2 500 teachers is an abomination that will wreak havoc on schools and communities, exacerbating their already dire circumstances and making survival even more challenging.
Where is the outrage from political parties on both the left and right, the teacher unions, religious organisations, and other community groups? Why the radio silence?
Is this a case of political alignment that is completely out of touch with the dire circumstances in schools and communities? Or are our public opinion leaders comfortably ensconced in their middle-class bubbles, with their children in former Model C and independent schools where employing additional teachers through school governing body funds has long been a strategy to offset government teacher post-cutbacks?
In local communities across the Cape Flats, we already face overcrowded schools and widespread hunger, with teachers battling to educate in harsh conditions. Studies show that teacher stress levels are sky-high as they struggle to keep body and mind together while dealing with their students’ challenges.
Dropout rates are alarmingly high, and this situation will worsen exponentially when the horror of losing more teachers takes hold. Schools will be forced to let go of productive teachers, class sizes will skyrocket, and retrenched teachers will face unemployment. Despite reported teacher shortages in the system, many qualified teachers will find themselves jobless and may leave the profession altogether or take jobs on the international market.
Moreover, many of our most qualified and experienced teachers will likely be enticed to leave the profession. They will accept whatever meagre retrenchment package is on offer and join the queue for jobs in independent schools where they will be employed.
This mirrors what happened in the 1990s when the best-qualified teachers in scarce subjects left amid the retrenchment process to take up jobs in the burgeoning Model C and independent school sectors. This contributed to the decimation of quality teaching in our community schools.
The Western Cape Education Department’s handling of this situation is palpably disastrous. How can such a significant number – 2 500 teachers – be let go in one fell swoop? Schools have long been at the receiving end of teacher number adjustments, learning at the end of each year that they must reduce their staff and adjust teacher-to-learner ratios and class sizes, always to the detriment of teaching and learning.
The quality of education has, by and large, been compromised despite the heroic efforts of teachers and school communities to adjust and mitigate these harsh circumstances. Through valiant efforts, a few isolated schools have managed to retain quality learning and achieve good results.
The rationalisation and retrenchment of teachers has been with us since the early 1990s. Having been a teacher in a community school then, I experienced the impact of the first wave of retrenchments in 1993 onwards. Teacher morale was devastated. Schools scrambled to reorganise themselves, but the damage was done. Our community schools never recovered.
The scale of the proposed retrenchments is comparable to those in the 1990s. When implemented, it will further erode the functioning of schools, reducing their capacity to provide learners with a quality education. Gateway subjects will be dropped from schools’ curriculum offerings. Dropout rates will increase, and communities will be left to address the fallout: an increase in unemployed young people without any educational foundation to enter the post-school system or become employable.
Community cohesion will be further undermined, and struggling families and communities will be expected to pick up the slack, absorbing these young people into survival schemes that are more likely to feed them into the illicit economy and the cycle of crime, policing, and imprisonment.
Political and civil society must oppose this proposed teacher retrenchment, slated to start in January 2025. The GNU must be pressured to do the right thing and defend and protect our schools and the communities they serve.
- Aslam Fataar is Research Professor in Higher Education Transformation, Stellenbosch University.
