While members of the provincial legislature are bracing to debate the imminent teaching post cuts in the Western Cape, education rights organisations have amplified the call for changes in budget policies to ensure the interests of children and education are paramount.
The Western Cape Education Department has announced that it will not renew more than 2 400 contract teacher posts when they expire at the end of the year.
The department attributes this decision to budget cuts, which they have blamed on the national government.
The department noted that it had a budget shortfall of R3.8 billion and it was necessary to cut back on teacher posts to remain financially stable.
Provincial Legislature Speaker Daylin Mitchell granted GOOD Party Brett Herron’s request to have the issue debated as a “matter of urgent public importance”.
The debate is set to take place on Thursday.
“Unsurprisingly, this regressive step will have a disproportionate impact on school communities in less affluent areas, which will bear the brunt of the teacher losses as their parent bodies won’t be able to afford the costs to replace them.
“We cannot sit by and allow decisions to go unchallenged that will undoubtedly add to the already severe inequality in the Western Cape.
“There are solutions to the province’s engineered funding crisis, which simply involve making better budgetary choices,” said Herron.
Equal Education and the Equal Education Law Centre said they strongly oppose the “harsh decision”.
The decision will further “prolong and worsen the crises” faced by the education sector and that severely overcrowded classes, with 50 to 60 learners in a lesson, are still prevalent in many poorly-resourced schools across the country, said EE.
“Through austerity, provinces and education departments are being forced into unfair choices at the expense of poor and working-class communities whose constitutional rights the state is obliged to protect. For 11 years, the National Treasury has slashed social spending.
“But, after a decade of austerity and debt service costs continuing to skyrocket, Treasury has ‘little to show’ for its approach. Economists have long noted that cutting social spending ‘flies in the face of evidence that cuts to public investment can lead to higher public debt’.
“In fact, the only thing it has managed to reduce is access to basic and non-negotiable human rights. As a country tormented by the cruelty of obscene inequality, poverty and unemployment – we cannot bear the additional trauma of intensified austerity measures on our education system. As the Medium-term Budget Policy Statement approaches, Parliament must take heed of this crisis and change budget policies to ensure they comply with the Constitution,” said the education rights organisations.
Parents for Equal Education South Africa founder, Vanessa le Roux, said: “In the first term we lost almost 1 000 teachers. We knew at the time the number would be over 3 000 teachers. We were not sure when the next batch would happen. At the time the Western Cape Education Department also said ‘no, these teachers were not fired’, yet these teachers are not back in class.”
Cape Times