New year, same stories

AMID THE excitement of ushering in 2025, the second term of this academic year unfortunately began just as the previous term terminated. The litany of challenges affecting the school system was there to greet students, teachers and school administrators as they excitedly returned to school.

From crumbling infrastructure to resource deprivation, schools will once again be forced to function under severe constraints. Based on feedback from schools, the four-week break was unfortunately not embraced by the authorities as an opportunity to address outstanding infrastructural, health and safety issues plaguing the school system.

While the records will reflect a façade that all schools were reopened, ready and capable to resume the teaching and learning process, the reality revealed a different narrative. The reports of schools being disrupted due to health and safety issues have predictably begun to make the national headlines once again with calls for the authorities to urgently address these long outstanding issues.

These pleas have again been predictably met with a wall of silence or dismissal from the ministry of education and once again school communities are left to face these challenges on their own, but with covert pressure to ensure that schools remain open despite the health and safety threats posed.

TTUTA has been closely tracking these developments and is committed to ensure that the provisions of the law are adhered to. In defending the rights of its members, it ensures that schools conform to minimum standards of operational safety and efficiency because it believes firmly that the working conditions of the teacher constitute the learning environment of the students.

Teachers will continue to assert their right to work in safe schools. That is non-negotiable. They also have the right to demand that they be provided with adequate resources to deliver curriculum and be adequately compensated for the critical nation-building role they play.

This agenda will continue to preoccupy the union’s attention during this year, being forced to adopt drastic and unpopular decisions in its unrelenting quest to ensure our nation’s education system is characterised by quality schools delivering quality education.

Over the last decade this mandate has assumed unprecedented proportions given the rapidly deteriorating physical conditions prevalent in most of the nation’s schools owing to age and prolonged neglect.

Like most other public facilities, schools suffer from inadequate or non-existent facility management regimes and are left to deteriorate to calamitous proportions, precipitating drastic and extreme responses from stakeholders before remedial action is undertaken by the authorities.

Between a highly centralised and bureaucratic facility management arrangement and a micro management approach that has been adopted regarding schools, administrators and teachers are left almost helpless as they watch their schools literally fall apart before their eyes.

What is more disconcerting is that there is no indication that the situation will improve. The calls for the authorities to provide schools with basics such as tables and chairs remain unfulfilled. Schools will have to continue to devote precious time and effort to engage in fundraising activities to provide rudimentary resources to remain open and functional.

This year will once again see teachers enduring exponential levels of student indiscipline and deviance as parents continue to abdicate their responsibilities to ensure their children are brought up in the right way. They will continue to contend with a generation of parents who see child rights in a vacuum, divorced from responsibility and accountability.

From rude, impolite, bad-mannered and discourteous attitudes to gross disrespect and insolence, the patience and tolerance of teachers will be tested to its limits, judging by trends of past years.

Anger, intolerance and frustration will continue to be the underlying emotions of many students, with teachers having to dig deeply into their emotional arsenal to provide such students with a sense of hope for a brighter future.

TTUTA and its functionaries will certainly be kept busy giving the foregoing challenges, but the spark of hope for a better and brighter future will continue to define its approach and modus operandi as the principal education stakeholder.

Despite the dismissive attitude of the ministry of education and the demonisation by various sectors of the society over the years, it has persevered to pursue its mandate for improvements in the quality of education.

It remains committed to rational, dispassionate and respectful dialogue and working with all other stakeholders and the ministry. Its commitment to the cause of quality education and the enhancement of teachers’ status remains steadfast and unwavering. H

ere is to a productive and rewarding 2025.