Once again, the time to declare the post basket of educators for the year 2013 in the Eastern Cape has arrived.
This is an annual exercise enabled by legislative mandate that stipulates that:
“The Member of the Executive Council responsible for Education in the province must determine the educator post establishment of the provincial department of education in terms of section 5(1) (B) of the Act, 1998 (Act No. 76 of 1998) in accordance with any applicable policy made in terms of the National Education Policy Act of 1996.”
Consultation
The declaration must be preceded by consultation that involves teacher unions and School Governing Body Associations.
As such this year I started formal consultations facilitated by the Provincial Education Labour Relations Council (PELRC). This approach follows from the management plan of the Collective Agreement of June 2012.
The process of consultation started from 23rd of August this year between the MEC, Unions and SGB Associations. It was preceded by an information sharing session on the 8th August 2012, followed by a Budget Workshop on the morning of 23rd August 2012.
There were five sessions, overall, of consultation with all the parties for a better understanding of the complexities involved in the process. I am satisfied with the process of consultation as the parties exhausted all avenues in managing the consultation.
Contextual factors
The key strategic factors essential for declaration are the following, though not exhaustive:
- learner numbers
- curriculum needs
- budget/ financial reserves
As I continued with consultations, I also had to ensure that the Eastern Cape Department of Education (ECDoE) carries out its obligation on this work towards the declaration:
Budgeting, taking into account realistic, concrete factors impacting on the post provisioning process:
- basic salary structure
- conditions of service
- mandates (National and provincial)
- court orders, and
- 1% budget cut
Learner number verification:
We have also undertaken a learner number verification exercise that included all parties in the consultation process (unions/DoE).
This was to confirm the correctness of the data collected from school through Annual Surveys.
This exercise has overall led us to determination of the total basket for declaration.
Declaration:
It has not been an easy process to determine the post basket. In consideration of the basket, in particular I had to consider one of two options that were confronting the MEC taking into account the following factors:
Learner number have declined by 2%:
The indicative budget for 2013 post basket is R17 985 770 000 (this results in a short fall of R800 million)
With the painful facts, the options left were either to:
Reduce the number of educators (retrench) or:
Save jobs and instead incur a budget short fall of R800 million
As a caring government I have opted for the latter and hope that together with the teachers we will deal with and address the challenges by resolving the following:
- rationalisation process;
- movement of excess teachers
- resolving long standing instances of absences due to ill-health
- undertake persal clean-up.
I also recognise the importance of the role of temporary teachers especially those, offering scarce skills. To this effect, I have asked the department to audit the profiles of temporal teachers with the view of addressing critical skills in the system.
I herewith wish to declare the 2013 post establishment as follows: I call upon the people of the Eastern Cape to work with us as the Department of Education to transform our education.
I thank you!
