Education system crisis: 30 000 qualified teachers are unemployed or doing other jobs

With no budget for more teachers, thousands of qualified teachers are jobless.

The Unemployed Educators’ Movement of South Africa (UEMSA) and Build One South Africa (Bosa) has formed a partnership to tackle the issue.

According to Bosa’s spokesperson Mudzuli Rakhivhane, Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga stated there were 24 000 vacant teacher posts and UEMSA’s database had recorded almost 30 000 qualified teachers were unemployed or doing other jobs.

Education system is in a serious crisis

Rakhivhane said the partnership would see the parties working to bring national attention to the cause of unemployed qualified teachers across the country and begin a programme of action to demand tangible action.

“We cannot accept this while thousands of teachers are unemployed and some overcrowded classrooms have up to 70 pupils to one teacher,” she said.

“Our education system is in dire straits. South Africa loses half of every cohort which enters the school system by the end of the 12-year schooling period.”

Expert unpacks

University of KwaZulu-Natal associate professor in education Wayne Hugo said UEMSA was responding to a real issue where teacher graduates were struggling to find employment, even with high vacancy levels.

Hugo said this was aggravated by extra resources being poured into teacher assistant programmes, rather than focusing on the more effective use of the existing teacher base in SA.

“Bosa has picked a relevant problem which has a definite and obvious answer – develop more effective and efficient strategies to employ our existing qualified teacher human resource base.

“But if this is being done at the cost of not taking advantage of our already existing qualified teacher base, then Bosa is right to publicise the issue,” he said.

Basic education spokesperson says there is no budget to employ qualified teachers

However, department of basic education spokesperson Elijah Mhlanga said they “do not have the budget to employ all the teachers which are qualified”.

Dropout rates

In regards to high dropout rate, Rakhivhane said more than 50% of SA’s primary school pupils were in classes with more than 40 pupils, with about 15% in classes exceeding 50 pupils.

“Two out of 10 pupils drop out of school after Grade 3, four out of 10 after Grade 9, six out of 10 after Grade 10 and 7, three after Grade 11. The underperformance of government in addressing this widens the inequality gap,” she said.

Rakhivhane said the memorandum of understanding to formalise a partnership would work towards:

-Creating public awareness and taking a stand against issues such as the teachers’ intake process, the ratio of qualified teachers to pupils, subject to allocation of unqualified teachers, abuse of the Presidential Youth Employment Initiative, salary kickbacks and assault;

-Requesting the department to conduct a third-party audit on the aforementioned issues;

-Assisting in creating employment for the members to the best of its ability;

-Working with the National Unemployed Workers Union to upskill members as coaches;

-Providing legal aid in the legal action to be taken against the DBE.

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– lungas@citizen.co.za