More than 2,400 educator posts will be cut in the Western Cape from January 1 2025, according to a circular issued by the province’s education department on Tuesday.
The department said it faced a R3.8bn budget shortfall over the next three years, leading to the cuts.
In the circular, head of education Brent Walters, said the department only received 64% of the cost of the public sector wage agreement, with the remaining 36% to be funded by the province.
Walters said in an effort to cut spending, the department had frozen the recruitment of noneducator staff at head office and across districts, with a current vacancy rate of 21%, and had also cut spending across its directorates.
According to the department, a circular was issued on November 21 2023 that indicated that to maintain the number of permanent teaching posts in the system and stability in the schools, “cost-containment measures” needed to be implemented.
But despite budget cuts of R2.5bn it still faced a R3.8bn budget shortfall over the next three years, Walters said.
“Considering the growing budget shortfall and fiscal uncertainty, we have no alternative but to announce the reduction of the educator post allocation by 2,407 posts, effective January 1 2025 — the start of the 2025 school year,” Walters said.
According to National Professional Teachers’ Organisation of SA (Naptosa), there are 37,135 teachers in the Western Cape and 34,728 posts are proposed for 2025.
“We can now either run into the red financially or we can reluctantly reduce the number of educators in our system to afford our current wage bill,” Walters said.
He said that schools would receive their 2025 staff allocations on Friday. “We should never have been placed in this position and it is a fight we share with other sectors such as health.”
He said the Western Cape government had already taken steps “to address the impact of the decision not to fully fund educator salaries, as well as raised the matter at the Council of Education Ministers’ meeting for urgent action”.
Naptosa Western Cape provincial CEO Riedwaan Ahmed said the union opposed the cuts.
He said the process “will inevitably result in the nonrenewal of contracts” and some educators being classified as “excess”.
“This will have a negative impact on the education of every child in every classroom in this province.
“The ratio the education department is projecting — one teacher for every 36 learners — does not translate to the reality within our classrooms in the Western Cape.… While the department says they want to ensure education for every learner in every classroom, that has now certainly gone out the window,” said Ahmed.
“The contract posts are going to go first … The department says they are pro-poor and we’ve asked them not to touch the foundation phase. But we’ll see on Friday,” said Ahmed.
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