- Grassy Park and Parkwood residents held a protest against the planned teacher job cuts in the Western Cape.
- The cuts threaten to impact marginalized schools, reducing subject offerings and class sizes.
- The community rally called for action to protect educational resources for children in underserved areas.
Grassy Park and Parkwood residents joined forces in a picket on Thursday 31 October to highlight their concerns regarding the loss of up to 2 400 teacher posts in the Western Cape.
In August, the Western Cape Education Department (WCED) announced a R3,8 billion budget shortfall, which would see a drastic reduction in teacher posts for next year.
Organised by PR councillor Wesley Neumann, the picket was in support of the community, learners and teachers who will be affected. “It is common knowledge that teacher post cuts are happening at schools, some are losing 10 teachers and others two teachers, but it has a huge impact on marginalised schools,” he said.
Neumann, a former Heathfield High School principal (“Fired teacher switches to politics,” People’s Post, 22 October), said teacher cuts have far-reaching consequences.
“This is the first stage of outsourcing education to the private sector. If you are from a poor community and your child wants to do maths or science, you are forced to look to a private or former Model C school, which makes it unaffordable,” he said. “Because of teacher cuts, the curriculum at schools is changing and for example, maths is replaced with math literacy or subjects like science and art are dropped.”
Neumann added that it was sad to see the overall impact on schools across the province.
“Our subject offerings should be expanding and we should not be losing teachers,” he commented. “If anything, we need to create opportunities for children to excel, so to cut subjects such as maths, physics or science out of the curriculum will be devastating.”
Communities across Cape Town took to the streets on Friday 13 September to highlight an “education crisis” due to budget cuts that could see up to 2 400 teacher jobs in jeopardy (“Education crisis,” People’s Post 17 September).
Desmond Titus, a member of the Special Action Committee (a group of Neumann supporters formed during his case with the WCED), said he was concerned about how the teacher cuts would affect learner truancy. “The WCED plans to cut 2 400 teachers and how would that affect learners?
Especially at the end of the day, we would have more learners in the classroom, from 45 to 52 learners per class,” he said. “Currently, there are many learners bunking and we could see more children dropping out and bunking classes.”
According to Titus, the teacher cuts would be more significantly felt in the poorer communities. “We are worried about the dropout of children and also the job losses of teachers,” he shared. “Many of the teachers have bonds and cars to pay, how will they survive? There seems to be no urgency to support the so-called coloured schools in the Western Cape.”
He described the teacher job losses as a major disaster waiting to happen. “There used to be support groups and special classes for children in the past and that isn’t there anymore, so it will be a major disaster,” said Titus.
