The Director General of the Department of Basic Education, Mr. Mathanzima Mweli, has called on schools to become teachers according to the subjects they specialize in.
Mweli said there is a problem of shortage of teachers in certain subjects in some schools, while there are full of teachers who teach special subjects.
He said it is important that if teachers are assigned, they should be assigned according to the subjects they have majored in at universities.
“You find that there is a lack of a teacher who will teach the subject of agriculture, but the school is full of teachers who teach languages. This led to the fact that one of the teachers who would be teaching languages was taken and put in to teach agriculture when he has no knowledge of this subject,” he said.
He said this in response to members of Parliament, following a complaint that there are teachers who teach subjects they have no knowledge of.
The chairperson of the education committee, Ms. Joy Maimela, said that they visited different schools and came across the problem of teachers who do not know anything about the subjects they teach every day.
He said that in some schools, they found principals teaching because of the lack of teachers.
“In some of the schools, the results were not good. When we asked, we were told that it was because there was no dedicated teacher teaching that subject. This thing has spread in our schools, and the department must take action.”
And EFF member Mr Mandla Shikwambana, echoing Ms. Maimela’s words, said that this problem has become more common in schools.
“It’s not just that teachers are reluctant to teach, the problem is that they teach subjects they don’t know. This creates a problem for students because they are being taught by people they don’t know.”
Mweli said they are trying to solve this problem by assigning teachers trained by the government, under the Funza Lushaka scholarship.
However, he complained about the financial problem, which made them unable to hire those teachers.
“We end up letting them go and look for work or we support them by teaching them because we don’t have any vacancies to hire them. According to the law we should be hiring them all but we can’t because of the money,” said Mweli.
In this meeting, it was revealed that about 10,000 teachers were taught with this scholarship, but only 2,662 were employed.
Another thing that emerged is that the provincial departments are facing a big problem of not being able to fill the vacancies due to money.
Provincial departments were also urged to use all the money that has been allocated to them, especially for infrastructure because many schools are in a bad condition.
The Deputy Minister of the department, Dr. Reginah Mhaule, complained about the increase in the number of students every year, which causes overcrowding in the classrooms.
“Just in Gauteng this year, about 100,000 new students have arrived, who were not there last year. The department had to build about 30 schools, to be able to accommodate this number. This is something that will not happen because of the money. We cannot accept these students even though the classrooms will be full.”