SADTU Media Release, 31 December 2014 SADTU END OF YEAR STATEMENT The year that was South Africa has just attained a milestone of celebrating twenty years of democracy. Our democracy is maturing so must our systems of governance. As our democracy matures, so must our efforts to realize the objectives of our National Democratic Revolution intensify. We remain committed to advancing the cause of the working class. Equally, we remain determined to defend the gains that came with 20 years of de-mocracy that include the critical democratic institutions such as Parliament. The year 2014 was partly characterized by the emergence of new odd alliances such as those between the vanguards of hooliganism in Parliament hiding behind revolutionary speak and the neo-liberal free market proponents. The sole purpose of these odd alliances is to antagonize the ruling ANC, fundamentally, we do not have a problem with an opposition in Parliament, we did not take kindly however to the new found zeal by others to advance their political objectives through anarchy thus undermining the functioning of this important institution. At the same time we marked a year since we lost one of the key patrons of our edu-cation system former President Nelson Mandela. We will remain indebted to his ef-forts in leading our struggle for freedom and for giving special attention to children and education. We remain inspired by his selfless efforts to better the future of our children. We come to the end of another difficult year. Firstly our members, despite the very difficult challenges, continued to give their best in pursuit of our objective - a quality public education system. We remain resolute in our desire to attain an effective, effi-cient and quality public education system. Not only have our members remained resolute in our desire to attain quality public education but also they displayed extreme loyalty towards the union. During the course of the year we saw a limping take off of a breakaway public sector union with our members being the primary target of its recruitment strategy. True to their character, our members refused to be swindled into what is clearly a money making scheme masquerading as a militant union. Our members were quick to realize that the mooted union had at its forefront disgruntled former leaders of SADTU who had a conspicuous common denominator, being dismissed by the union for financial irregularities. Our members displayed a similar commendable attitude in how they received the painful yet very necessary decision by the federation COSATU to dismiss one of its affiliates. As education workers, we understood that the unity of the workers is sup-posed to be the ultimate goal of any organized labour formation, we further appreci-ated that this ultimate objective of unity was slowly degenerating into an unachieva-ble pipe dream whilst one of our sister affiliate had an exaggerated sense of self and viewed its self as a federation within a federation. As 2014 comes to an end, we lament the fact that many of our demands remained unresolved. We had hoped that this year would see a marked improvement in how the system responds to our concerns and proposals. We had also hoped that the structures and systems in the education system would move towards aligning with the proposals of the National Development Plan. We remain extremely concerned at the fragmented approach adopted by the de-partment, as it is more and becoming clear that there is lack of systematic approach in taking the transformation of the education system forward. It remains our view that as the NDP makes it clear, amongst others, the management of the education system remains key in addressing the socio economic challenges facing the country. South Africa is said to be spending a substantial amount of budget on education. Numerically, this appears true but we still have to realize the real impact of the sup-posed huge budget allocated in education. We continue to see continuing shortfalls in education budgets resulting in ongoing cuts in various programmes. The most affected has and remains schools, which are the key delivery unit in education delivery. We still have to see a comprehensive and integrated plan to implement the recommendations of the NDP on education management. We continue to have challenges in education infrastructure and resourcing generally. We have repeatedly made it clear that this has a negative impact on education delivery and that this must be addressed once and for all. As we move into the new year, we again do so with an understanding and appreciation that our struggle for quality public education must gain further impetus and call upon the education authorities and the government to demonstrate their clear commitment to the recommendations of the NDP by ensuring that a clear plan is developed and implemented to give effect to the NDP. Firstly, we must remind the relevant authorities that educators are professionals and must be treated as such. As the NDP puts it: “Professionalism and the conditions that enhance professional conduct must be rebuilt, and accountability for perfor-mance needs to be enhanced. This means that professional development, peer re-view, school infrastructure, the provision of learner support materials and teacher support systems need to be strengthened”. It is in this context that we call upon the department to develop and implement plans that will realize this object instead of developing and implementing ad-hoc and short-term interventions, which have put more pressure on educators. The real and major challenge faced by the public education system is the absence of a dedicated human resource plan, a clear service delivery improvement plan, an infrastructure development plan and an appropriate management structure and system for schools. These instruments are required in terms of the Public Service Regulations and must be there first as a matter of compliance but more importantly as the framework for all interventions in educations. The current approach to systemic evaluations including the dreaded Annual National Assessment, which continues to put pressure on an already over-burdened teaching core, must of necessity be located within the Service Delivery Improvement Plan if it were to be necessary and successful. Similarly, the proposed interventions on the recruitment and performance of principals and teachers must of necessity be located within a dedicated Human Resource Plan which must comprehensively address the requisite human resource needs of schools and matters relating to the conditions of service of school staff. In the same spirit and in line with the call of the NDP, a proper learning and teaching environment must be created and the infrastructure needs of schools must be addressed to create a conducive environment. The safety of learners and school staff continues to be compromised by the lack of adequate school infrastructure. Similarly, overcrowding and lack of appropriate facilities in most schools especially those serving the rural and previously disadvantaged continues to have an adverse effect on both the ability of educators and learners. It is in our view, and we repeat this in as many times, the first and most important step that must be taken in the transformation of our education system. We remain resolute that we will not accept interventions, which do not address the fundamentals that will bring about a systematic change to deliver on a quality public education system. Human resource planning and its impact on quality education. Education as a labour intensive programme requires adequate and well-capacitated human resources. Over the many years, the issue of human resources has only been limited to teaching staff and ignored the desperate needs of schools for support staff. The lack of adequate or any support staff in schools have over the years put extensive pressure on the teaching staff to perform non-teaching functions reducing valuable contact time. The levels of poverty and illiteracy in some of our communities present major psy-cho-socio problems at our schools and our educators are not trained to deal with these issues but are nevertheless expected to do so. Thus in addition to dealing with overcrowded classrooms, shortage of teachers and poor infrastructures, teachers are on a daily basis confronted with this mammoth challenge for which no resources or support are provided. Early Childhood Education. The continuing failure to address the structure, systems and conditions of service for ECE continues to fail the progress of the system of education. The Annual National Assessment has revealed the difficulties at foundation phase level. This is mainly because of the failure of the ECE system, which is the building block for the foundation phase. Despite our numerous attempts the conditions of service for Grade R practitioners remain unresolved. This cannot go on any longer. Our patience and flexibility has now been tested to the extreme. Not only is this problem unfair from a labour rela-tions point of view but also is disruptive of the education of our children. Collective bargaining. We have repeatedly engaged with the government to address all outstanding collective bargaining matters and ensure the conclusion of all outstanding issues. The following collective bargaining issues remain unresolved: • The continuing disparity between the teachers and their counterparts in the public service as a results of 1% performance pay progression in education whilst others receive 1,5% performance pay progression. This has undermined the teaching profession by eroding the trust teachers have in the system and has contributed in the mass resignations we have experienced in the recent past. • The Recognition of Prior Learning (RPL) which seeks to recognize the contribution of the long serving, experienced educators whose qualifications are old and but their commitment and dedication to the system remains unquestionable. • Permanent Appointment of Temporary Educators would help ease the pressure on the system linked to the redeployment of Educators held additional to the post establishment. The annual redeployment of Educators bring a lot of instability to the system, and therefore due consideration needs to be given to periodic redeployment of Educators on three year basis so as to reduce the instability caused by the movement of Educators on annual basis. This would also help us to realise the objectives of Quality Learning and Teaching Campaign (QLTC) and work towards the overall improvement of the results. • Post provisioning model remains the vexing issue, as the current model does not address the imbalances of the past and does not cater for the needs of small schools, farm schools, LSEN schools and multi-graded schools. We therefore call upon the Department of Basic Education to speed up the development of the new model that will be pro-poor and would reduce the huge classes at are currently an impediment to the achievement of QLTC. This is a long standing matter and would have to addressed as a matter of urgency. • While we recognize the importance of Quality Management System (QMS), we call upon the DBE to incentivize the Educators whos conditions of service remain deplorable. This would further allow for the realization of the objectives of the Service Charter in the Public Service. • The conditions of the Office Based Educators remain a sore point and has caused serious discontent amongst these educators. The federalization if the education systems has complicated this matter and undermined the collective agreements reached at the national level to ensure uniformity in remuneration for equal job. • The rural allowance policy review process agreed upon in 2012, has not been at-tended to. This was meant to address the current instability it creates in the manner in which is being implemented by the various provincial departments. School management and systems The NDP correctly identified that reducing layers of bureaucracy would make more resources available to support schools and teachers. Whilst we fully agree with the principle of managerial accountability and responsibility of school management, we need to point it out however that same can only be realised in a proper enabling en-vironment where: • The department must enable school managers to perform the full spectrum of school management functions and that school managers be given those functions. • School managers must be clothed with the requite power and authority to take decisions; and • School managers must have the requisite and adequate resource to perform their functions. Planning. The current planning approach operates on a global approach and does not address local conditions of schools. For instance the budget process is not specific to each school nor is it based on the specific needs or plans of each school. It is thus important as a starting point that planning be decentralized and take a Bottom up approach and the budget process must be based on the costing of each School based on its particular requirements. Therefore, there must be a direct relationship between the individual school plans And the overall budget for education. Furthermore the planning and budgeting must, take into account the functions to be performed by other spheres and organs of state which have an impact on the creation of a conducive school environment. This in particular relates to services such as water, sanitation, electricity and infrastructure such as roads, transport, libraries and sporting facilities. Policy Over the years since the dawn of democracy, there have been major changes to the curriculum. Though fully desirable, it appears that the changes in the curriculum have also brought about major challenges in the delivery of desired learning out-comes. Any change to the curriculum demands a dedicated teacher development programme, which is unfortunately regarded as a non-core by the department of ed-ucation. This posture by the department to regard a core function as a favour must never be tolerated if we are to realize the objective of changing the curriculum. Financing schools. Over the many years that we have raised this issue, we continue to battle with lim-ited budgets for schools. Quite often transfers to schools are either not effected on time or are arbitrarily reduced whenever overspending occurs at departmental level. We call on the department to ensure security for all funds allocated to schools and that this must not be changed in the middle owing to over-expenditure. We further call on the department to ensure that each school has a detailed resource and infra-structure plan, which must serve as the basis for planning and funding for all school requirements. Where going to school puts your life at risk. We have observed the callous killings in schools and colleges in many parts of the world in 2014. In Gaza and other communities in Palestine, the Israeli attack on the UN schools reduced the classrooms to the burnt-out shells and left many school children dead. This made headlines across the world. In Afghanistan, the Taliban militants have murdered many children, burned down and bombed schools. These heartless murderers have no regard for life as they tar-get girls, boys and the teachers. The killings by these militants have attracted con-demnation by entire globe. We condemn the killing of students and teachers because schools and colleges have a vital role to play towards working for peace, by promoting inclusion, toler-ance, transparency, cross-cultural understanding, sensitivity to culture and language, conflict resolution and enquiry-based history learning methods Matric results. As we eagerly await the National Senior Certificate (Matric) results, we hope for an increased number of quality passes as we need these for the development of our country. We appreciate the efforts of the Department of Higher Education and Train-ing to open more universities and FET colleges and we hope these will be filled up by students with quality passes and relevant subjects like African Languages, Math-ematics and Sciences. We call on the matriculants who may not make it not to give up but to respond re-sponsibly and maturely by rewriting the subjects they failed. To those who will make it, we wish them all the success in tertiary education of in the world of work. Collective responsibility towards quality public education. We need to take collective responsibility for both our success and failures and avoid the blame teachers syndrome”. Education is a system and it does not start and end at schools. While we support the call for accountability from teachers and principals , we equally expect accountability throughout the system up to the Director General of the department. Education remains a societal issue and implore on all stakeholders to come to the party and change our schools to be conducive centers for learning and teaching. We will continue to call on our members to respect their work and teach everyday, while expecting the department to provide schools with the needed resources and support . We urge parents to take full responsibility and interest in the education of their children and the learners to take their own education seriously. Let us make education fashionable. Let us work together to educate our nation. ISSUED BY: SADTU Secretariat CONTACT: Mugwena Maluleke, General Secretary 082 783 2968 Nkosana Dolopi, Deputy General Secretary, 082 709 5651 Nomusa Cembi, Media Officer, 082 719 5157
Posted on: Sat, 03 Jan 2015 13:59:17 +0000
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