We are doing everything we can to fight for our teachers, but the national government only provided 64% of the cost of the nationally negotiated wage agreement, leaving the province to fund the remaining 36%.

Despite implementing a drastic R2.5 billion non-personnel budget cut, we still faced a R3.8 billion budget shortfall over the next three years.

To remain fiscally stable, we had no choice but to reduce the basket of educator posts for 2025.

No.

Some contract teachers were not reappointed after their contracts ended on 31 December 2024, and some permanent teachers were asked to move to another school where there is a suitable vacancy.

Around 2 100 teachers leave our system each year, for reasons such as relocation or resignation, so there will be vacancies that will open up for excess permanent teachers to move to, or for contract teachers to apply for.

No.

Over half of the posts that were removed were vacant or occupied by permanent staff.

Permanently employed teachers may be asked to move to where there is a suitable vacant post.

Contract teachers have not been reappointed after their contracts ended on 31 December 2024.

However, with an average of 2 100 teachers leaving our department each year for reasons such as relocation or retirement, there will be vacancies opening up for these teachers to apply for.

Yes.

During the Adjustment Budget process, we announced that we were working on a plan to ensure that we could deal with the increase in learner numbers in 2025.

By making even more cuts in our own budget, we will be able to make up to 477 teaching growth posts available to accommodate the extra learners in our schools.

Importantly, this includes our brand-new schools which need staff, and also schools where a large number of additional learners have been enrolled.

It is important to note that the post reduction, and the addition of growth posts, are two different things.

The addition of new teaching posts to accommodate more learners is not the same as the number of posts affected by the budget shortfall.

The new posts will not necessarily be in the same place as posts that were removed.

For example, a brand-new school would not previously have had any posts. And there may not be significant growth in a school where a post was cut.

During the Adjustment Budget, we made it clear that an additional funding allocation had helped us to break even financially after we had reduced the posts.

We also made it very clear that we were working on a plan to ensure that we could deal with the increase in learner numbers in 2025.

By making even deeper cuts into our existing budget, we will be able to provide up to 477 posts to staff new schools and schools that have a significant increase in learner numbers.

Once the new growth posts have been allocated to schools, schools will try in the first instance to find a suitable excess permanent teacher needing to be placed in a vacancy. However, if no suitable candidate is available, the school will advertise for a new candidate.

The reduction in teaching posts has increased the projected average teacher to learner ratio from 1:34.2 in 2024 to 1:36.7 in 2025.

While the ratio has increased, it remains lower than the ratio in 2020 (01:37.4). We have managed to reduce class sizes by adding 3 270 teaching posts since 2020.

It is unfortunate that this progress has been partially reversed by the national government’s decision to not full fund the 2023 wage agreement.

The additional new growth teaching posts we are adding for 2025 will help to reduce the ratio once allocated.

We sped up the conversion of contract appointments in qualifying permanent posts, and widely encouraged schools to apply for these conversions.

The option to convert contract appointments to permanent ones was available until 15 November 2024, allowing for contract teachers to become permanent teachers in specific qualifying posts.

In 2024, we converted over 7 300 contract appointments to permanent appointments in qualifying posts.

The formula determining how the total number of teaching posts gets divided between schools is provided by the national government, according to the Personnel Administration Measures for Educators as issued by the Department of Basic Education.

The formula takes into account class sizes, the workload of teachers, the size of the school, language, curriculum, poverty, and other factors.

Yes. We made the decision to exclude Special Needs schools from a reduction in posts, given the nature of their teaching and learning environment.

The decision by the national government to not fully fund the 2023 multi-year wage agreement has caused a fiscal emergency in all provincial education departments.

This is why all provinces have been working together through the Council of Education Ministers to approach National Treasury with a clear picture of how devastating the decision not to fund the wage agreement has been for provincial education departments.

By making even more severe cuts in our own budget, we will be able to make up to 477 teaching posts available to accommodate the extra learners in our schools.

Around 2 100 educators leave our system each year, for reasons such as relocation or resignation, so there will be vacancies that will open up.

Public service post appointments have also been affected, and we are currently not filling posts unless a vacancy could put critical services at risk. This includes freezing the appointment of staff in Head Office and District Office posts, which are currently carrying a 22.5% vacancy rate.

The #BackOnTrack programme is crucial programme to reverse learning losses, and it works.

Cutting the #BackOnTrack programme even further would have very little impact on the sheer size of the shortfall, and in doing so, we would remove revision classes for matrics, books for our Foundation Phase learners, and extra classes and teacher training for the schools hit hardest by the pandemic: those in poorer communities.

Cutting systemic testing would leave us with no objective measure of whether interventions are working, and where schools should focus their efforts to ensure that learners are meeting the required learning levels. 

Moreover, even if we were to cut all the programmes named by stakeholders and hollow out our department to only pay educator salaries and not invest in our learners and teachers, we would not come anywhere close to closing the R3.8 billion gap.