Durban - Prominent school governing body associations have sided with teachers’ unions in opposing the use of class time to train maths teachers.
The associations agree with the unions that allocating every Monday for training Grade 8 and Grade 9 maths teachers would prove too much of a disruption.
The Basic Education Department has issued an immediate instruction to schools to implement the new training model, which will see the teachers tested on what they ought to be teaching on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.
Basic Education spokesman Elijah Mhlanga said earlier this week that a radical approach was needed to fix the dire state of maths teaching and “save our children”.
Tim Gordon, chief executive of the Governing Body Foundation, said it was just as concerned about last year’s Annual National Assessments results as the department was, and it was supportive of interventions targeted at improving teaching. But the school timetable was complex and would result in classrooms without teachers and would affect the rest of teaching.
Matakanye Matakanye, general secretary of the National Association of School Governing Bodies, said that while it supported teacher development, it should not be disruptive.
The Federation of Governing Bodies of SA Schools (Fedsas) said the Monday training model would do more harm than good, and some teachers were not attending the training.
Fedsas chief executive Paul Colditz said the department was shifting its responsibility to train teachers on to schools.
Mhlanga countered criticism by saying that “some organisations just want to rubbish everything we do instead of contributing to solutions”.
* The SA Democratic Teachers Union (Sadtu) has warned the KwaZulu-Natal Education Department that terminating the services of unqualified teachers would leave classrooms unattended.
It demanded the reinstatement of roughly 1 000 unqualified teachers.
The situation prompted Sadtu KZN secretary Nomarashiya Caluza to remark at a media briefing at Sadtu House in Durban’s CBD on Wednesday that the provincial department had a “tendency to operate as if it is a spaza shop”.
“The growing tendency of the employer to automatically terminate the services of temporary educators without checking whether those are protected or not… threatens the delivery of quality teaching and learning, as learners are left without teachers,” Caluza said.
However, KZN Education Department spokesman Muzi Mahlambi said there had not been a complete termination of the contracts of all protected temporary teachers in the province.
“Last year we issued a circular indicating that we would not be renewing the contracts of all the temporary teachers, but that schools who were desperate for teachers should write to the head of department (Nkosinathi Sishi) and get his approval.
“Some schools complied but others did not.”
The Mercury