Vacant teacher posts double

2012-08-21 18:55

Teacher. (AFP)

Cape Town - The number of vacant teacher posts around the country more than doubled in the first quarter of this year, MPs heard on Tuesday.

Figures tabled by senior department officials during a briefing to members of Parliament's basic education portfolio committee show the worst-affected region was Mpumalanga, where the number of vacancies rose from 3.32% to 14.48%.

The actual number of teacher vacancies in this province rose from 857 on 12 January this year, to 3 738 on 12 March.

Across all nine provinces, the total number of vacant posts rose from 10 846 on 12 January to 22 051 three months later (from 3.72% to 7.56%).

The highest vacancy rate was in the Eastern Cape (5 107 vacancies on 12 March); the lowest was in the Northern Cape, where vacancies dropped slightly over the quarter, from 654 to 628.

In Limpopo, the province that experienced a major textbook crisis, the total vacancies shot up form 190 in mid-January to 3 197 in mid-March (from 0.44% to 7.40%).

According to basic education deputy director Devi Pillay, the percentages are calculated against what the department calls a post provisioning norm (PPN), which is "the number of teaching posts declared [in a particular province] by the [education] MEC".

Earlier, Pillay briefed the committee on "teacher demand and supply" at public schools in South Africa.

"[A total of] 70.5% of schools had no vacancies in January 2012, [a figure] which decreased to 38% in March this year."

Persal

She said it was "not apparent" why the vacancy rate had suddenly increased, but warned there were problems with the department's Persal (personnel and salary) system, from where the figures were derived.

Persal was "not correctly linked" to the department's basic accounting system.

"The quality and accuracy of our Persal data is questionable," Pillay said.

She said solving this problem would be a "mammoth task", given the volume of historically inaccurate data contained in the 15-year-old system. The number of temporary teacher appointments had also risen.

According to the document: "Use of temporary appointments increased between January and March [this year] from eight to 12%."

Acting deputy director general Themba Kojana told the committee the teacher "attrition rate" was 3.2% a year, involving 12 500 teachers.

Responding to a question, he said 43% of the teachers leaving the department were in the 30 to 39 year age group.

The department was not immediately able to say how many teachers were currently employed at public schools in each province.

The total of the posts declared (PPNs) in each of the nine provinces, as shown in the document tabled at the briefing, was 291 669.

- SAPA