South African teachers are highly stressed with most of them on the point of nervous breakdown.
Others are applying for medical boarding, while some are contemplating resigning as they struggle to deal with large classes, ill-disciplined pupil behaviour and parents who refuse to acknowledge their children’s shortfalls.
This is according to teacher unions as well as industry role-players.
“It has become a serious problem over the years. It started off with classes being larger in size, where the pupil-teacher ratio is one to over 40. Another problem is the abolishment of corporal punishment.
“Ill-disciplined behaviour combined with the large classes has led to the teachers’ mental health being affected,” said Anthony Pierce of the National Professional Teachers’ Organisation of South Africa.
“Not only are they stressed, but there are psychological problems as well.”
He said that because of growing violence at schools, teachers were also constantly worried about their physical safety in classrooms.
“This brings on panic attacks. It’s happening across the country.”
Pierce said some teachers adopted the “saintly” approach when they spoke about or dealt with their concerns.
Others were more vocal.
“We have at least two teachers coming to our offices a week to complain,” he said. “Some are at the point of nervous breakdown. Others are applying for medical boarding and there are those who want to resign. We try to give advice, like consider changing your work situation, but it doesn’t seem to always help.”
He said one solution to help carve the way forward was to re-negotiate the current teacher-pupil ratio. Another was to provide teachers with the capacity to deal with ill-disciplined children.
Due to the abolition of corporal punishment, the State and schools introduced short- term methods to deal with errant behaviour, Pierce added. This included detention, reporting bad attitudes to the principal and calling in parents to the school. “But these have failed.”
Pierce said it was vital for educational experts to brainstorm alternatives to deal with the issue.
The deputy general secretary of the SA Democratic Teachers’ Union, Nkosana Dolopi, expressed similar sentiments.
“There’s no doubt that teachers are stressed due to their conditions of service. There’s an increased workload, where they seem to be doing a lot more administration work, which is taking them away from their core function - teaching,” he said.
“Then they have to deal with undisciplined pupils and their parents, who complain when their children are being corrected. Added to that, there is little support offered by their employers (departments of education) to deal with issues and concerns.”
Dolopi said the department had to create an environment conducive to teachers performing their duties.
“They must appoint more teachers.”
He said it would be ideal if parents supported teachers by becoming more involved in the governance of schools.
“Parents must remember that education starts at home. When pupils arrive at school, parents must have already contributed to the upbringing of their children by ensuring they are disciplined and respectful. You cannot expect teachers to do this.”
The public relations officer for the SA Principals’ Association – Chatsworth and District, Gordon Govender, said: “We have noticed that when a child is unruly and the school decides to give detention after school as punishment, the parent complains that they don’t want this because they cannot find alternate transport for their kids as it is dangerous.”
Govender said that when they had attempted to use a demerit system, the children had laughed at this.
He added that it was important that the department re-introduce guidance counsellors at schools.
“Guidance counsellors stopped working at schools about 15 years ago.
“Yes, we have life orientation, but this cannot replace the work that can be done by a qualified counsellor.
“If this is re-introduced, the problem at schools regarding ill discipline could be sorted and maybe then the teacher stress level wouldn’t be as high as it seemingly is.”
The spokesman for the KZN Department of Education, Muzi Mahlambi, said they were liaising with the relevant stakeholders and unions to discuss issues pertaining to the pupil-teacher ratio and the lack of discipline at schools.