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Little hope for jobs for EC Funza Lushaka bursary holders

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There is little hope for jobs for new teachers who have qualified under the Funza Lushaka bursary scheme despite its slogan, ‘Make a difference…become a teacher’.

According to the reply to a legislature question I asked the MEC for Education, Mandla Makapula, his department had 5 239 vacancies and 9 144 additional educations as at 27 January.

In addition, the department had 846 Funza Lushaka graduates on its database who qualified in 2012 and 2013. These graduates would be “prioritised” after the current additional educators were placed and “if there are any suitable vacancies”.

Under the current education system a career in teaching is simply not a viable option in the Eastern Cape.

The ongoing post-establishment deadlock is due to the failure by the Department of Education to place the right number of correctly qualified teachers in every school in the province. Agreement 1 of 2014 between the Department of Education and the South African Democratic Teachers Union (Sadtu) is simply a sugar-coated version of Agreement 1 of 2003. As long as this standoff between the department and union is allowed to continue, there will be few jobs for young teachers and our children will suffer the consequences of not getting an education.

The DA welcomes that MEC’s acceptance of our suggestion that teachers be offered early retirement without incurring penalties. This will begin to alleviate the decade-long dilemma in the province whereby we have twice as many surplus teachers than we have funded vacant posts.

I echo the words of DA Provincial Leader Athol Trollip last week during the legislature debate on the Premier’s State of the Province Address, that children without an education “have no hope or future other than standing in EPWP queues to get piece work to push a spade or to draw some kind of SASSA grant from the State”.

Today too many South Africans are left out of the economy because they cannot access skills and they cannot find work. Our education system under President Jacob Zuma’s ANC has left too many of our people out of the economy.

The DA stands for change. The DA stands for jobs.

Edmund van Vuuren

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Port Elizabethan

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