The Western Cape education department says it has filled 477 teacher posts despite announcing last year that 2 407 contract teachers would not be reappointed as a result of severe budget cuts.(Photo by Gallo Images / Sunday Times / Thuli Dlamini)
The Western Cape education department says it has filled 477 teacher posts despite announcing last year that 2 407 contract teachers would not be reappointed as a result of severe budget cuts.
“Through further budget reprioritisation, we are in a position to make up to 477 new growth posts available to schools with a significant increase in learner numbers in 2025 and provide staff for the new schools we have completed,” Western Cape education MEC David Maynier said in a written response to questions from the Mail & Guardian at the weekend.
“I said that we would fight for our teachers, and we continue to do so.”
The department said last year it had made R2.5 billion in non-personnel budget cuts in its 2023-24 budget, including an R436 million cut to a programme established to provide academic support for learners and staff affected by the Covid-19 pandemic and a R1.2 billion cut to infrastructure spending.
In January this year, the department said it planned to build nine new schools and 265 additional classrooms for learners in the 2025 school year, and had therefore decided to employ more teachers to keep up with the growing number of pupils.
According to the department, it did not cut teaching posts and then added them back into the system for the 2025 academic year.
Department spokesperson Kerry Mauchline told the M&G this weekend that the addition of new teaching posts to accommodate more learners “is not the same as the number of posts affected by the budget shortfall”.
“The new posts will not necessarily be in the same place as the posts that were removed,” she said.
The Western Cape has reported over 1.2 million learners in public schools this year, 107 000 of them in grade 1 and 100 000 in grade 8.
Last August, the provincial education department was not able to renew the contracts of 2 407 teachers because of a severe budget cut of R3.8 billion.
Maynier said at the time that the reduction in posts would mean that some contract teachers would not be reappointed after their contracts end on 31 December 2024, while some permanent teachers would be asked to move to other schools with suitable vacancies.
Mauchline said the reduction in teaching posts has increased the projected average teacher-to-learner ratio from 1:34.2 in 2024 to 1:36.7 in 2025.
South Africa is already grappling with a 31 000 teacher shortage, the national department of education told parliament last year. KwaZulu-Natal, at 7 044, recorded the highest number of unfilled posts, followed by the Eastern Cape and Limpopo with 6 111 and 4 933 respectively. The Northern Cape, at 726, had the least number of unfilled posts.
Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana announced an allocation of R508.7 billion for the learning and culture sector and R332 billion for basic education in the 2025-26 budget.
An additional R19.1 billion was allocated over the medium term to retain about 11 000 teachers in classrooms.
The South African Democratic Teachers Union says the funding “remains insufficient to address the sector’s critical challenges”.
“We cannot guarantee that the funding will secure the jobs of those already in the system,” it said in a statement.
Advocacy group Equal Education welcomed the education spending increases, but added that “this is not enough to reverse the onslaught that over a decade of austerity has waged on the basic education sector”.
Godongwana has further allocated R10 billion over the medium term to increase the subsidy for early childhood development from R17 a day per child to R29 and expand access to the programme to about 700 000 more children.
