South Africa has a large public sector wage bill, but education is one of the fields that must be prioritised. (Photo by Gallo Images / Sunday Times / Thuli Dlamini)
Nothing more aptly illustrates the dysfunction in many South African schools than a video circulated this week of schoolboys cheering as their classmate wrestled with a female teacher.
The quips about teaching being an “extreme sport” aside, many soberly reflected that the incident is yet another indictment of our education system, particularly in public schools.
Discipline is a big problem — and has been central to the enduring discourse about the wisdom of abolishing corporal punishment.
But this is just the tip of what’s wrong with the education system. Its many problems include poor infrastructure, generally bad exam outcomes, a high dropout rate and an unwieldy teacher-to-learner ratio in many state schools that has seen some educators managing classes as big as 50 pupils, according to a Stellenbosch University study.
The Western Cape government has been on the defensive against the outcry that ensued after it announced the loss of 2 400 teaching jobs by the end of the year because of severe budget constraints.
The Democratic Alliance was quick to blame the national government, citing a “fiscally irresponsible public wage increase in the October budget last year that is now forcing provinces to slash frontline service posts to the detriment of the most vulnerable”. It pointed out that the bloodbath will be worse in KwaZulu-Natal, where 11 000 teaching posts may be lost.
The Good party was having none of it, pushing for a debate on the issue and vowing not to allow educators’ careers to be sacrificed “at the altar of a political fight that the Western Cape government is unnecessarily orchestrating”.
While political parties bicker over who is to blame, the reality is that millions of pupils in public schools will find themselves crammed into even larger classes, vying for the attention of ill-equipped teachers.
We hold no brief for a blanket defence of bad teachers — news sites are littered with headlines of educators behaving badly, including skiving off work and sexually abusing learners.
But we’ve also seen the best in teachers, such as the legendary maths teacher William Smith, whose recent death triggered testimonials, including from luminaries of society, many from poor backgrounds, whose lives he touched in a profound way as students.
And as the author of the Stellenbosch study, researcher Gabrielle Wills, put it: “You cannot win a war unless you train your army. Our teachers are the key agents for change with respect to providing quality learning and education for children.”
There is no arguing that South Africa has an unsustainably large public sector wage bill and should trim its civil service.
But in doing so it must prioritise the protection of key sectors such as health, public security and education.