SADTU

SADTU SCORES VICTORY FOR UNPAID TEACHERS AND THOSE WHOSE SERVICES WERE UNLAWFULLY TERMINATED.

16 December 2016

The South African Democratic Teachers Union has scored a major victory in the Port Elizabeth Labour Court following an application it made to compel the Education Department to pay the salaries of teachers and to reverse a decision of the former Acting Head of Department Ms Sizakele Netshiphalala to terminate the services of educators she claimed were appointed irregularly.

The department has over many years failed to pay salaries timeously or at all. One of the educators SADTU represented had not been paid her salary for 11 months when SADTU launched the urgent application. She and many others have since the launch of the application been paid after the Department requested a postponement in October 2016. As a result of this application many other members of SADTU have reported that their salaries have now been paid.

Prior to the matter being heard on the 14^th December 2016, SADTU and the Department reached an agreement in terms whereof:

1.1.         The department undertook to ensure that every educator who was appointed, assumed duty and rendered a service and who has not been paid will be paid her or his salary within 45 days. This means that the department now has 45 to ensure that no educator is owed a salary.

1.2.         The letters terminating the services of 3 educators which the department sought to terminate alleging that they were not properly appointed are withdrawn. These educators are qualified educators recommended by the School Governing Bodies after the interview process. The Head of Department had approved their appointments but later turned around alleging that they did not have the degrees specified in the advertisement. Although the educators do not have those specific degrees they have the degrees which meet the requirements for appointment as educators.

In terms of the settlement agreement which was made an order of the court these educators will now be put in other posts in the schools in which they presently are or transferred to others schools.

In terms of the court order SADTU is required to provide a list to the department of all others educators affected by the former HoD’s decision to terminate their services within 20 days where-after the department must make a determination in respect of each educator.

The court order further states that these educators will be placed or transferred to other schools. Therefore no qualified educator will lose their jobs. 

SADTU therefore calls upon all educators regardless of whether they are SADTU members or not and who have not yet been paid or have received letters of termination to visit their nearest SADTU branch and provide their information to enable SADTU to compile and submit the list to the department.

SADTU will not hesitate to enforce this court order should the department not meet its obligation and fully comply with order of court.

As SADTU celebrates this victory of her members and educators in general, SADTU wishes to restate her resolve as per Pillar of Vision 2030 to vigorously fight and defend the rights of members. The outcome of this application is evidence of this resolve.

SADTU Eastern Cape Provincial Task Team

HeraldLive

Eastern Cape bottom of class – again

 January 5, 2017 Guy Rogers and Angela Daniels 450 Views

Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga
Picture: Sunday Times

Matric results slightly higher, but five districts score pass rates under 50%

The Eastern Cape’s 2016 matric results are slightly up from last year but the province is still at the bottom of the class nationally.

Graaff-Reinet achieved the top marks in physical science nationally and Cradock was top overall in the Eastern Cape – but the province as a whole foundered, with the only five districts nationally that obtained a pass rate of under 50%.

Announcing the National Senior Certificate exam results last night in Johannesburg, Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga hailed the improvement in science and maths marks by black pupils and the overall improvement in the pass rate, despite a record 828 000 pupils who wrote the exams.

Focusing on the overall pass rate, inclusive of progressed pupils – those pushed through to matric after failing Grade 11 more than once – she said seven of the nine provinces had improved, with only KwaZulu- Natal and Mpumalanga slipping. The Eastern Cape improved from 56.8% in 2015 to 59.3%.

The pass rate of the Eastern Cape, which continues to languish at the bottom of the pile, was 3.2 percentage points lower than that of Limpopo, which came in second last, and a whopping 28.9 percentage points below front-runner the Free State.

The Eastern Cape also improved when progressed pupils were excluded from the results, with a 63.3% pass rate, up 1.1% from 2015 – but still found itself stone last out of all the provinces.

Even more worrying to provincial legislature education portfolio committee chairman Fundile Gade was the fact that 10 000 matric pupils dropped out during the course of the year in the province.

“We had registered 92 000 pupils at the beginning of the year, but only 82 000 wrote,” he said.

“My first concern is those missing 10 000. Where did they go?”

Gade said pupils who had dropped out had “the potential to contribute to the levels of illiteracy in the province”. He also said that interventions put in place following the dismal 2015 results seemed not to have worked and a major focus needed to be on the functionality of schools.

“There are 277 schools [in the province] that are dysfunctional and they let us down,” he said.

Another concern was the five districts in the province that had less than a 50% pass rate.

“My greatest interest tomorrow will be seeing if those five districts fall into the 12 districts that do not have district directors,” Gade said.

Praising Holy Cross in Mthatha which produced the country’s top pupil in the Quintile 3 category, Gade said the institutional leadership of the province should look at the training of principals.

He said it was clear that with good leadership schools could achieve.

“It was not easy for Holy Cross.

“I was there after June and they were complaining of a lack of 12 to 14 classrooms, but they achieved the top pupil in the country.”

DA shadow education minister Edmund van Vuuren said while he was overjoyed at the 2.2 percentage point increase in the pass rate, he was sad that five of the worst districts in the country were from the Eastern Cape.

He said a major problem in the province was the implementation of plans.

“Every year, they [education officials] put good plans on the table but there are problems implementing them,” he said.

“If they had implemented them, we would have seen a higher increase.”

Van Vuuren made reference to the education department’s promises to assist progressed pupils, the rationalisation of schools and visits to poor-performing schools.

“They [education officials] promised to visit 4 150 schools but, by the end of June, had only been to 343.

“If they had visited all of them and seen what problems they had, it could have made a big difference.

“They also had a plan to introduce mentors, former principals, to poor-performing schools but only did this in late October and early November. “Now how can you expect these mentors to help those schools achieve their goals so late?”

The department’s targets of a 1% absenteeism rate for teachers and a 2% rate for pupils had also not been met.

NMMU education expert Shervani Pillay said the province’s results were deeply disappointing.

She said that for years systemic and structural problems had been pointed to as the reason for the Eastern Cape’s poor performance but it was time to let go of that excuse. “We see the same problems in other provinces that have managed to improve,” Pillay said

She said poor implementation of good plans was to blame.

“Nothing substantive is being done. There is still a shortage of teachers [and] teachers not being paid, and this is not being addressed.”

Pointing to the many protests against a lack of teachers, she said: “You can’t have top-class interventions when you don’t have enough teachers.

“There needs to be a more considered approach to interventions.

“The national plans are good, but how do you bring them together? There is shallow implementation.

“The time has come for a much more deep-seated, qualitative approach.”

Motshekga said the matric results were an important barometer for her department as they sought to shape and improve the country’s education system.

Although the results had improved, it was clear that to make a sustained difference the quality of learning and teaching in the early grades had to be improved, she said.

Speaking in support of the department’s controversial progressed learner policy, she said last year’s matrics had included the largest number of progressed pupils since the policy was instituted in 2013.

The overall improvement in the pass rate despite this factor showed the department was on the right track, she said.

Instead of being relegated to high school dropouts, the progressed pupils who had now passed had the opportunity to further their education at university or technical and vocational colleges.

“We made this intervention in line with the call by the National Development Plan for a 90% increase in learner retention.

“An inclusive education system contributes to an inclusive economy.”

Hailing a “system on the rise”, the minister said 33 521 pupils had achieved marks of 60% or more for maths over the 30 314 in 2014 and 31 812 in 2015.

“This is important as it means more learners get to qualify for maths-oriented programmes at university and they are hence equipped to fill critical gaps in the economy.”

She said by far the biggest movement within this area was the improvement by black pupils.

Of the 1 709 more pupils who achieved more than 60% for maths in 2016 over 2015, 1 308 of them were black pupils.

“The trend points to a narrowing of the serious race-based inequalities in schools,” Motshekga said.

IOL

#ANC105: Zuma unveils R870bn plan

ANC TURNS 105 / 9 January 2017, 06:35am

Baldwin Ndaba and Luyolo Mkentane

IN STEP: Cyril Ramaphosa, Jacob Zuma, Baleka Mbete and Gwede Mantashe during the January 8 address at Orlando Stadium for the 105th anniversary of the ANC. Picture: Matthews Baloyi

Johannesburg – Black people must benefit from the economic resources of the country, including access to their land.

This was the message in the annual ANC January 8 statement delivered by President Jacob Zuma during his party’s 105th birthday celebration at Orlando Stadium in Soweto on Sunday.

Zuma’s statement offered a multi-pronged approach to deal with the ills of the country. These included the inclusion of blacks in running the economy, strategies to fight crime and corruption, as well as returning land to black people.

Earlier, Zuma conceded that faction fighting within his party was affecting its fortunes.

“Our own research and interactions with members of the ANC demonstrate clearly that the people abhor the apparent preoccupation with personal gain. People are clear: their main priorities are jobs, fighting crime and corruption.

“Our task therefore is to grow the economy, create jobs and rigorously fight crime and corruption,” Zuma said.

It appears the outcome of the August 3 local government elections, which saw the ANC losing the key Joburg and Tshwane metros, had forced it to review its strategies and prioritise land and jobs.

Zuma said more decisive steps must and would be taken to promote greater economic inclusion and to advance ownership of the economy by blacks.

He predicted the economy was set to grow by 2.9 percent this year.

“As the governing party, the ANC must use the levers of state power to transform the economy and improve the lives of our people. It has a duty to use government incentives, procurement, infrastructure, investment and other measures to create new industries and expand existing industries.