As the South African Council of Educators (Sace) registered 48 000 teachers in 2022/23, at least 31 were struck off the roll for misconduct.
This was revealed by Sace chairperson Mabutho Cele, in the regulatory body’s annual report tabled recently in Parliament.
Cele said the council registered teachers to the basic education sector.
“In doing so, it managed to professionally register 48 110 newly qualified educators, including foreign nationals, and 5 124 special/conditional registrations for people who are not professionally qualified as teachers.
“However, these people are needed in terms of the three-stream model (technical and vocational), focus schools’ areas, various regions, and other related matters.”
Cele also said as part of professionalising the early childhood development (ECD) and initial teacher education sectors, 3 862 ECD practitioners and 15 922 student teachers were professional and registered respectively.
“All the registrants go through the screening and vetting process through the SAPS criminal record database and the Department of Justice and Constitutional Development’s national register of sexual offenders,” he said.
Sace held 794 investigations into misconduct complaints lodged against teachers and conducted 122 disciplinary hearings.
“In terms of the sanctions meted out, 31 were struck off indefinitely,” he said, adding that those struck off but suspended for a specific period with sanctions and fines were 80.
CEO Mapula Ella Mokgalane said the registration administration fee collected from registering educators was R16.5 million. Teachers pay a monthly levy of R16.50.
According to Mokgalane, the levy appeared to be incommensurate with the mandate and role of Sace.
She noted the budget allocation was imbalanced between the administration/salary bill and delivery of services to the teaching profession .
“This situation seems to be aggravated by an attempt to extend provincial offices in their current brick-and-mortar form, along with the related increase in the administration and human resource costs.
“It is for this reason, among others, that Sace is going through a self-renewal process that includes the rethinking and reconceptualisation of provincial offices and exploring varying cost-effective and context sensitive models.
“As such, the process to continue with provincial offices has been deferred to investigate these issues further,” she said.
Mokgalane also said there were challenges experienced regarding the management and recovery of membership fees, whereby R6.5m had to be written as irrecoverable.
“New members register without paying membership fees (policy gap), which accrue to the end of the financial year and remain irrecoverable. The council is considering membership policy as a remedy for this deficiency,” she said.
Cape Times