WATCH: Teachers union Naptosa hopes new basic education minister will tackle overcrowding

National Professional Teachers’ Organisation of South Africa (Naptosa) said it is looking forward to working with the new Minister of Basic Education, Siviwe Gwarube.

South Africa’s second-largest teacher’s trade union said they hoped the new minister from the Democratic Alliance (DA) would tackle long-standing issues such as overcrowding and infrastructure, as well as “tweaking” the curriculum to make it more modern-friendly.

This after the country’s largest teacher’s union, the South African Democratic Teachers Union (Sadtu), said it was not confident that with Gwarube at the helm, it would be able to advance its interests in social justice, quality public education and the protection of teachers’ rights, given the DA’s stance on unions and Sadtu in particular.

ALSO READ: DA promises ‘laser beam focus’ on education despite Sadtu criticism

Gwarube took over from Angie Motshekga, who held the position for more than a decade.

National Association of School Governing Bodies general-secretary Matakanye Matakanye also welcomed the appointment of Gwarube as an “overdue” directive for the department.

Watch: Basil Manuel on working with the new minister of Education

Bright new ideas

Speaking to eNCA, Naptosa’s executive director Basil Manuel admitted the teacher’s union does not know the new minister very well.

“She is a young lady, and hopefully [comes] with some bright new ideas,” he said.

“We are not party-political, Naptosa has never been. We are political, of course, but not party-political. So where they come from doesn’t matter, provided in our view that they are part of Project South Africa – they are there to do the right thing for the country,” said Manuel.

For this reason, he said they look forward to working with Gwarube.

“We certainly want to see that the minister address some of these age-old issues that have been bugging us.

“We are talking here about the infrastructure problems, we are talking about overcrowding, we are talking about provinces not necessarily doing the right thing,” Manuel said.

ALSO READ: Angie Motshekga’s ‘Defence Force’ has SA in stitches

Tweaking the curriculum

At the same time, Manuel urged the new minister to build on the good that had been done before her.

“We have come through a long period of calm within the education sector, we need to build on that. We also need to see that she acknowledges that we have a good curriculum and that the curriculum needs to be tweaked for the 21st century and we want to see that sped up,” he said.

Manuel added the union was somewhat disappointed in the size of the cabinet because it had always called for a reduction.

“But we also understand that given the makeup of this kind of cabinet, that to accommodate everybody is virtually an impossible task,” he added.

Additional reporting by  Thando Nondywana.