Investing in teachers, produces results

A NATIONAL survey recently indicated that approximately 50% of educators who are currently employed at schools in South Africa would prefer to retire early, and the primary motivation for this was heavy workloads and exhaustion.

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The Teacher Preferences and Job Satisfaction Report has revealed that the majority of teachers have to cope with a lot of stress because of administrative tasks that are time-consuming and not always beneficial to the teaching and learning approach or system in place. This was the overall stance of most educators who participated in the study.

The alarming revelation was that educators at all schools in South Africa highlighted stress levels due to demanding and inundated workloads.

It has always been assumed that teachers located in under-resourced schools or poorly resourced schools have higher stress levels than those employed at private or semi-private schools. However, this is not the reality.

Educators employed at schools that facilitate middle to upper-class communities have revealed that the demands from parents are numerous, time-consuming, and unnecessary.

Some of these demands include parents viewing weekly tests with the teachers, even though teachers would have communicated test results and remedial work for the child to pursue.

Sometimes, these ‘concerned’ parents aim to ensure that their child has not been victimised unnecessarily by attaining fewer marks than what they could have achieved.