Durban - The proposed competency tests for principals and annual national assessments (ANAs) for teachers were disrespectful and would be demoralising, the general secretary of the SA Democratic Teachers Union said on Monday.
Speaking in Durban on the sidelines of a World Teacher’s Day celebration, Mugwena Maluleke said the Department of Basic Education should instead focus its efforts on professional development training for teachers.
Minister of Basic Education Angie Motshekga recently announced that from January teachers applying for principals’ posts would have to write competency tests before being promoted.
Earlier this year, in a written reply to a parliamentary question, Motshekga said the plan was to have teachers write the annual assessments, but that the results would be used only for research purposes.
Maluleke, who gave the keynote address on Monday in his capacity as vice-president of labour federation Education International, said Sadtu had its own concerns over how principals were employed.
“Is it not time that we looked at the qualifications and said: ‘For you to be a principal, this is the minimum qualification you must have, and this is the minimum experience you must have.’ Don’t we think it’s time that there must be training for deputy principals and those who aspire to be principals?
“Or, if you are an aspiring HOD, you are trained before you even apply. Is it not time we talk about those things, so that we then improve the competency of principals?
“What we are against is subjecting principals and teachers to writing the ANAs … Don’t we think that it is a risk in this country for 400 000 teachers to be so demoralised that you disrespect them, that you regard them as having no knowledge and no competency?
“We are saying (the department should) conduct an audit of skills to inform its human-resource development strategy.”
Maluleke said the department needed to recognise that teachers came from different backgrounds. It was a legacy of apartheid that many teachers were not adequately trained. Some principals enjoyed large numbers of support staff, while at other schools principals had virtually no resources.
Turning to the boycott of administering and marking the assessments, Maluleke said he did not understand the insistence on pupils writing the assessments in December.
“The insistence is based purely on the fact that the department must be seen to be running education. As if unions are contesting that. Unions are not contesting that space of running government and running education.”
Maluleke said that, were it not for teachers’ unions, the department would be running the schooling system through “top-down” policies.
“That doesn’t work in education. You are not working with bricks – you are working with human beings. There is law in this country that says you have got to consult (the Education Labour Relations Council) prior to any publication of policy.”
Maluleke said he wanted to state clearly that teachers’ unions had no interest in running Motshekga’s department.
“The (basic education) ministry, for the last five years, has not been consulting (teachers’ unions) … We need to encourage the ministry to understand the law.
“Unions have got to be powerful. As a politician, you don’t have to be worried that the unions are too powerful, because the unions will assist you to implement policies.”
Sadtu provincial secretary Nomarashiya Caluza balked at austerity measures on Monday implemented by the KwaZulu-Natal Treasury, which meant that the Education Department would only be able to fill absolutely critical vacant posts.
‘All posts are critical,’ she said. ‘Down with Finance Circular Six,’ she said to applause from the teachers gathered.
The Mercury