I would like to state the following. To date, government was largely bullied by the SA Democratic Teachers Union, Sadtu, not to assess teacher performance in public schools and not to take action to stop the shocking South African teacher absenteeism rate; the highest in the Southern African Development Community region, with South African mathematics teachers running at a rate of 19,4 days absent compared to 6,4 days in Mozambique.
Furthermore, this occurs while 78% of the education budget goes to personal expenditure, mainly teachers' salaries. The question is: Will government this year have the guts to stand up for the millions of learners in public schools, who are desperate for quality education, whose parents cannot afford private education, or will it again side with Sadtu, their alliance partner, because it is a pre-election year?
To emphasise the point that I made, very informative recent study found that, on average, maths teachers in the North West province in South Africa taught only 15 lessons of the scheduled 130 for the period under the review. Will the Minister agree that we have to reverse this shocking trend in our country? Thank you.