We urge unions to fight alongside us, rather than against us

We are aware that teachers’ unions have threatened to go on strike.

Striking will not change the fact that we are being short-changed by the national government, which only provided 64% of the cost of the wage agreement negotiated nationally with unions, leaving the province to fund the remaining 36%.

Even if we cut all the programmes suggested by the teachers’ unions, we would not come anywhere close to dealing with the massive R3.8 billion budget shortfall.

The situation is critical. If we do not take drastic action to cover the massive shortfall, we compromise our ability to pay for our bills, which includes the salaries of teachers.

The only way we could close the gap would be to cut critical support to schools in poorer communities, including school feeding, learner transport, and payments to schools with which they pay their daily expenses.

We would have to hollow out our non-personnel spending to become a department that only transfers salaries and does not offer any support to teachers, learners and schools.

We have already made R2.5 billion in budget cuts to non-personnel spending, including dramatic cuts to the #BackOnTrack programme budget.

The #BackOnTrack programme is vital in reversing the learning losses caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, as regular class time on its own has not been enough to improve their learning outcomes. The pandemic disproportionately affected learners in poorer communities, and removing this support will similarly affect these learners the most.

Nearly a third of our #BackOnTrack expenditure is on books for all Foundation Phase learners, and training their teachers to teach reading effectively. Early-grade literacy is a critical priority for our learners, so cutting support in this area would further aggravate an already serious situation.

Another large portion of the #BackOnTrack budget is the revision support to our Grade 12 learners as they prepare for their final matric exams. Our learners in poor communities are especially reliant on this support, and cutting it would be a devastating blow to our matrics.

Cutting systemic testing would leave us with no objective measure of whether interventions are working, and where schools should focus their efforts to ensure that learners are meeting the required learning levels. 

We have not taken the decision to reduce the number of teaching posts lightly, and we are doing everything we can to fight for our teachers. 

We hope that teachers’ unions will choose to fight alongside us, rather than against us.