Pretoria - With just over a week before the start of the annual national assessments (ANAs), the biggest teacher union in the country has announced they are boycotting the tests.
The South African Democratic Teachers’ Union (Sadtu) has resolved to instruct its 250 000 teacher members to boycott invigilating the ANAs until the department of basic education stops imposing policies that “compromise… labour peace”.
Sadtu decided to issue this order at its national executive committee meeting last week.
The ANAs, which are a diagnostic tool to assess literacy and numeracy, are expected to be written between September 15 and 18. About 8.6 million pupils in grades 1 to 9 will write the tests.
The tests were first introduced in 2010. Last year’s ANAs indicated only 3 percent of Grade 9 pupils were numerate at a grade-appropriate level.
The target is 60 percent. The average score for the Grade 9 maths assessment was 10.8 percent.
The union claims the department had failed to consult with them on the ANAs.
“However, it has been reduced to an onslaught on teachers, with no intention to improve the system by ensuring fit for purpose intervention in the form of ongoing professional development for all in the system that was supposed to be part of the diagnosis,” the union spokeswoman Nomusa Cembi said in a statement.
She said the move to boycott the assessments was in defiance of the Department of Basic Education.
She said the department had “committed publicly to consult with unions on the principal standards (and) regulations” but this didn’t happen.
Instead, she said, it had embarked on “a gazette-driven tangent” (matter) which is meant to sideline the unions on issues affecting conditions of employment.
Despite the boycott, departmental spokeswoman Troy Martens said plans were on track for the exams to continue smoothly.
“We have requested a meeting with the union next week to hear what their problems are. But according to us, the exams are going ahead as planned,” she said.
The South African Teachers’ Union (SAOU) chief executive Chris Klopper said they had also asked the department for an urgent meeting over the issue.
“The SAOU has always maintained the ANA, in its current form, does not achieve what the Department of Basic Education says it does,” he said.
“More specifically, it is neither diagnostic nor formative and contributes little, if anything, to an accurate assessment of either the curriculum or the learner’s achievement.
“By extension, therefore, it is also of limited value when assessing classroom practice,” Klopper added.
Meanwhile, the DA has reacted with outrage to Sadtu’s threats to boycott the ANAs. The DA spokeswoman on Basic Education, Annette Lovemore, said it would compromise the ability to assess the pupils’ level of literacy and numeracy.
“It is a shameful decision which needs to be reconsidered urgently,” she said, adding she would write to the union and request they retract the planned boycott.
Pretoria News