The CEO of the education rewards incentives programme School-Days, Paul Esterhuizen, has expressed strong criticism towards the Basic Education Department for its failure to address the increasing number of vacant teaching positions.
Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga recently disclosed that vacancies had surged from approximately 24 000 to over 31 000 in the past three years.
In response, the department has authorised schools to hire temporary teachers. However, Esterhuizen argues that parents of learners should be alarmed by this situation.
Esterhuizen says, "We have an annual shortage of the number of teachers were producing and I get it, were losing a number of retiring teachers who are exiting the profession and on the other side of it as well we also find that a number of our teachers are being attracted to go and teach overseas so weve got a number of reasonsteachers do, they move province and you have an unfold vacancy at a school and the mandate to the school is yes, you can fill that with a temporary appointment because we need the teachers, we cannot have these numbers continue to escalate."
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