DOZENS of Eastern Cape government schools have again resorted to court, this time to have the provincial Department of Education declared in breach of a court order requiring it to openly advertise vacant teacher posts.
In December, Judge Judith Roberson ordered the department to permanently appoint 144 vacant posts at 90 schools that had opted in to a class action brought by another 32 schools against the department.
The department agreed to the court order, which also required it to refund R82-million to the 122 schools which had forked out money for teachers’ salaries over four years that the department should have been paying.
It was also ordered to advertise open bulletins of vacant teaching posts at schools by the end of April, July and September this year.
But the Legal Resources Centre (LRC), which is acting for the 122 schools, said the department had failed to do so, leaving them no choice but to have the department declared in breach of the order.
LRC attorney Cameron McConnachie said in an affidavit that the department had, in fact, not published a single post-level 1 open teacher bulletin this year. As a result, it had also failed to make any appointments to fill these vital posts.
McConnachie said the department had failed dismally in its statutory obligation to advertise vacancies and it had not produced a post-level 1 teacher vacancy bulletin since 2012.
“The result is devastating for pupils and educators across the Eastern Cape as many schools are currently experiencing a shortage of educators,” he said.
The only bulletin produced had been in June, advertising vacant posts for subject department heads, principals and deputy principals.
He said there were more than 1 700 other vacant teacher posts at schools in the province.
He wants the court to order the department to produce a bulletin by no later than the end of January.
The department has belatedly applied to the court for a variation on Roberson’s order. It wants the order to be changed to direct it to publish only two open post bulletins a year.
Human resources chief director in the department, Welile Payi, confirmed that the department had not strictly complied with the order in that it had not published open post bulletins.
He said the department had to deal with moving teachers who were not needed at their current schools – so-called teachers in excess – to schools with vacancies.
Payi claimed that Roberson’s order to meet their statutory obligations to publish open bulletins disregarded this requirement and would have the effect of enlarging the “already swollen post establishment”.
He said it was simply not feasible to publish four open bulletins a year.
McConnachie dismissed this, saying almost every other province managed to do so without difficulty.
The matter will be argued next week.
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