KwaZulu-Natal teacher unions say the school year will start on Wednesday with uncertainty due to issues over funds for Learning and Teaching Support Materials (LTSM), damage to schools and staff shortages.
National Professional Teachers’ Organisation of South Africa (Naptosa) KZN chief executive Thirona Moodley, said the union has been inundated with complaints from frustrated school principals who did not receive LTSM funds on time for the 2024 school year.
Moodley said schools placed orders for learning materials in 2023 and due to the department failing to pay their allocations, they were not able to pay service providers.
As a result, she said these schools had not received teaching and learning material for 2024.
“This will make teaching and learning impossible on the first day. Schools today (yesterday) received a fraction of what is due to them,” said Moodley.
Moodley said school principals had complained about using their personal funds to keep their schools running.
“This is not only unacceptable, it is unfair and irregular. Naptosa is fed up with a department that fails to fulfil its constitutional responsibility, to provide quality basic education to all. School principals are at the receiving end of a dysfunctional department and learners are innocent victims,” she said.
In addition she said the staffing was also a concern.
“The department will not renew some temporary educator contracts, the process for establishing school staff for 2024 is yet to be completed or even commence in some schools.”
South African Democratic Teachers’ Union (Sadtu) provincial secretary, Nomarashiya Caluza, said while teachers were ready to receive pupils, there were a lot of challenges last year when schools closed with the non-payment of LTSM.
“Principals were and are still concerned with the delay,” she said.
She said Sadtu had a meeting with the Department of Basic Education on January 7 to discuss the state of readiness.
“It was clear in this meeting that the department was still going to struggle to pay schools as they are still waiting for the national treasury to pay them.”
According to Caluza, Sadtu then started engagements with the provincial finance department for intervention.
“It is this intervention from Sadtu that resulted in the Department of Education getting financial assistance which has been disbursed to schools,” she said, adding that not all schools had received funds.
Naptosa said some schools had also been targeted by criminals resulting in furniture, window frames, doors and electronic equipment being stolen.
In response, the department said LTSM payments would be paid on Tuesday as well as a portion of basic allocations.
With regard to staffing, it said it had advertised more than 3 000 vacancies in September last year and successful incumbents will assume duty when schools reopen.
The department said 59 schools in 9 of the 12 districts were affected by storms and these schools would be provided with mobile classrooms and mobile ablution facilities.
“The department has put in place various measures to ensure that affected schools are provided with interim measures which includes mobile classrooms, mobile ablution facilities and dislodging of existing ablution facilities. Service providers to render these services have been appointed and work has commenced.”
The Mercury