THE KwaZulu-Natal Department of Education, together with teachers’ unions, says it has developed a mechanism to ensure the deployment of educators from Monday.
In a statement, the department said it has identified 961 surplus educators, through the process of the Post Provision Norm. About 700 of these educators had not moved to the identified schools as of Friday.
On Friday, the department and union representatives discussed plans on how this would be facilitated to ensure that schools were staffed.
“The department has since the beginning of this year appointed 521 new educators through the HR recruitment app. All redeployed and appointed educators are required to assume their duties from Monday, May 3, 2021 ...
“No school or school governing body is allowed to refuse redeployed or appointed educators. We will continue to work tirelessly to ensure that there is an educator in front of our learners,” said the head of the department, Dr EV Nzama.
Last month, Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga announced that there were 24 000 vacancies across schools in all the provinces.
Motshekga told Parliament that the national teacher vacancy rate at the end of February stood at 5.8%. She said the rate was for actual vacancies at schools in relation to the posts that each school had been allocated for 2021.
According to Motshekga’s statistics, KZN had a shortage of 7 274 teachers.
National Professional Teachers’ Organisation of South Africa spokesperson Therona Moodley said staffing at schools was a concern.
“Not all classes have teachers. This is unacceptable, as the opening of schools for pupils was postponed, giving the department more than enough time to adequately staff schools,” said Moodley.