DURBAN - Umlazi Comprehensive Technical High School parents have closed down the school after 23 teachers who were supposed to be placed in other schools because they were surplus refused to go.
Since Monday parents have locked the school gates and camped outside to block anyone from getting to school. When the Daily News visited the school on Tuesday it found scores of parents and teachers outside the gate. Police have also been called to monitor the situation.
One of the parents who spoke on condition of anonymity to protect her child said they had decided to shut the school down because the surplus teachers continued to come to the school and were disrupting learning and teaching.
The parents vowed to block the entrance until the department resolved the matter. She said the teachers affected were doing a lot of wrong things and were disrespecting the principal.
“These are rogue teachers and we have received information about their bad behaviour. We were aware that they were sleeping with our pupils and one of them was running mashonisa (loan shark) giving loans to our kids. They are a surplus here and even if they were not after hearing these allegations against them it was going to be difficult to allow them here, but the system kicked them out for us,” said the parent.
Teachers who were not affected said they came to work but found parents blocking the gate and could not gain access to the school premises.
The surplus teachers were outside the gate but refused to talk to the Daily News, saying they were not allowed to talk to the media. They also refused to reveal their union.
According to one of the education officials in uMlazi the teachers were affected by the post provisioning norms (PPN) process - which deals with the surplus teachers after the drop of the enrolment in the schools.
The official said the process began in 2020 but teachers challenged it arguing it was not fair. It was done again last year with all the unions represented but again teachers refused to accept the new schools they were placed to. He said the school’s enrolment had dropped from 15 000 to just over 1000 which necessitated the PPN process, adding that out of 70 teachers 23 had to be relocated to other schools.
KZN Education Department had not commented by the time of publication.
Daily News