Durban — Teacher unions are divided over the proposal to take away the power to hire teachers from school governing bodies (SGBs).
Currently, in terms of the School Act SGBs have powers to employ teachers in public schools.
The debate was sparked by the Education Union and Allied Workers of South Africa (EUSA), which called for the removal of parents from the recruitment process, arguing that the SGBs were not qualified to do that.
In a statement, the union said it was an insult for a qualified teacher to be interviewed by a panel that included persons who knew nothing about the work the candidate would do.
EUSA therefore called for the establishment of Education Central Recruitment Offices in all districts. The union said these offices would be responsible for receiving and sorting all applications, sifting and short-listing deserving candidates and conducting interviews. It added that the offices should be formed with district human resources officials who were qualified for the job.
“The establishment of these offices will further eradicate all corruption we have witnessed for decades in the process of hiring schoolteachers, department heads, deputy principals, principals and even directors,” read the statement.
The union’s general secretary, Siphiwe Mpungose, said their demands were based on credibility, which was lacking in the current SGB-based approach. He argued that as a result, many schools are headed by incompetent, corrupt and bully-type principals who were colluding with the SGBs to loot the finances allocated to schools. He said many school principals paid bribes to SGBs to get the posts, and rendered themselves vulnerable to perpetual favours to the SGBs that knew how they got their posts.
“To root out this paralysis, EUSA’s view is that district rotational recruitment offices are the answer,” said Mpungose.
“In this proposed approach, HR officers from a distant district would be brought in for a determined period to deal with the HR process of another district and leave once done with the hiring. For example, HR officers in eThekwini district will go to uThukela district and vice versa. This approach will minimise the rampant corruption that ends up getting incompetent, undeserving people into posts.”
He said the union was ready to provide more details of its proposed approach to salvage whatever little integrity and credibility was left to the hiring of schools-based personnel.
Although the department adopted a diplomatic stance on the proposal, saying it noted it and would look at its practicality, other unions and parents’ bodies scoffed at the idea.
National Professional Teachers of South Africa executive director in KwaZulu-Natal Thirona Moodley said the union’s understanding of the process was wrong because the powers to hire lay with the head of the department, not the SGBs, which only recommend.
She said the union was wrong in generalising that all SGBs were unqualified, because there were very well performing schools whose staff had been hired by the SGBs.
“SGBs are not the problem, as they are not the ones who initiate corruption, so the solution is to capacitate them,” said Moodley.
The proposal was also dismissed by the National Teachers’ Union, which said rotating panels would not stop corruption because corruption was now a culture in the country.
NTU president Sibusiso Malinga said the recruitment process in schools was always manipulated by union and department officials who wanted to deploy their own people.
Parents Association of South Africa’s Vee Gani accused the union of undermining parents' knowledge of the process, saying not all the SGBs were uneducated because some were formed by businessmen and former school teachers. He also blamed instability in schools on union officials who interfered with recruitment.
Daily News