Principals were asked to indicate their number of years as an educator, number of years as a principal in any school and number of years as a principal in their current school. The findings showed that principals were generally well experienced. The years of experience as an educator ranged from a minimum of 10 years to 43 years, with an average of 25 years work experience. Experience as a principal in any school ranged from 6 months to 34 years, with an average of 11 years. As a principal of their current schools, experience ranged from 4 months to 31 years, with an average of 10 years.
Moreover, additional information was sought on their educational backgrounds by explicitly asking about their highest level of education. There was data missing for 25 principals. These were cases where a Head of Department or other senior administrator answered the questionnaire. Only 1 percent had a secondary school certificate as the maximum qualification; 27 percent possessed a diploma; 7 percent had undertaken some university training; the majority, 37 percent, were however, university graduates and an additional 27 percent had post-graduate training.
145 | Concerning teachers, the survey found that in 72 percent of the schools, there were no teaching gaps and all allocated positions had been filled. The remaining 28 percent reported vacant positions ranging from 1 post to 14. It should be clarified that the teacher allocations for each public school are determined by the Department of Education. The teaching gap could be the result of the Department being unable to provide the full complement of teachers on time or it may be that the schools determine their own staff ratio which may be different to the Department‟s formula. Therefore, schools have to either increase the work burden of available teachers or recruit teachers from the school‟s own revenue to fill the teaching gap. Schools that do not have the financial means would simply have to operate with a larger than planned student-teacher ratio. Many fee- charging schools are able to fill this gap and even recruit more teachers than the minimum prescribed by the Department in an effort to have smaller teacher-student ratios.25
In terms of teacher qualifications, all the schools, with the exception of 10, confirmed that the teachers had the requisite teaching certificate and were therefore qualified to teach in schools. Therefore, about 95 percent of teachers are qualified. The schools with unqualified teachers did not have any unique characteristics. They were fairly evenly distributed between the two provinces, fee-paying status and quintiles.
As teacher absenteeism is often reported to be a recurring problem in the South African media, the survey asked whether all teachers were present and teaching in the school on
146 | the day of the survey. Sixty nine percent of schools reported that all their teachers were present and teaching on that day and 32 percent reported incidences of teacher absenteeism, signifying that on the day of the survey, at least one-third of all teachers were not present and teaching. Further on teacher conduct, the survey showed that only 2 percent of schools had had teachers laid off in the past 12 months. Reasons given included: absenteeism and redundancy. Interpreting low levels of dismissals to be cases of misconduct is misleading because the study found that laying off teachers in public schools is ultimately decided by the Department of Education, who may be reluctant to do so as it means that a school would be without a teacher until one is recruited. It is also important to note that South Africa has a long history of teacher unionism and these bodies have enjoyed a close relationship with government since 1994 and as such, they are powerful organisations (Govender, 2004).
Teacher salaries are set by the Department of Education, based on their qualifications (academic training and professional experience). The findings showed that monthly gross salaries ranged from a minimum of R3, 000 to a maximum of R20, 000. The average salary was R8, 807. There were 30 schools (20 percent) whose teachers on average, earned more than R10,000 a month. These teachers tended to work in medium sized schools (average size 635). Poorly remunerated teachers (earning less than R10,000 a month) worked in slightly larger schools (648 average). As shown in the table below, the difference in average salary between the two provinces is quite small. This was an unexpected finding given that one would have expected better qualified teachers to be concentrated in Gauteng, the wealthier province.
147 | Table 6.4 Teacher Monthly Gross Salaries by Province
Province where school is located
N Minimum Maximum Mean Std.
Deviation GP Teacher gross salary
(monthly)
79 5,000 15,000 8,751.06 2,233.7
NW Teacher gross salary (monthly)
70 3,000 20,000 8,869.43 3,219.1
Therefore, there was a fairly even distribution of qualified teachers across the two provinces. The data did provide evidence that better qualified teachers tend to work in higher quintile schools. Therefore, although this trend did not come across at the provincial level, it came across very clearly at the quintile level as shown below.
Table 6.5 Teacher Monthly Gross Salaries by Quintile
Quintile where school is located N Minimum Maximum Mean Std.
Deviation Q1 Teacher gross salary
(monthly)
30 3,000 15,000 8,163.4 2,759.9
Q2 Teacher gross salary (monthly)
20 3,957 20,000 8,372.8 3,448.3
Q3 Teacher gross salary
(monthly) 47 3273 16,599 8,282.7 2,648.8
Q4 Teacher gross salary
(monthly) 22 7,000 15,000 9,789.7 2,213.7
Q5 Teacher gross salary
(monthly) 17 8,000 13,479 10,072.2 1659.3
The mean statistics show a trend in teacher salaries whereby better paid teachers, who are also better qualified teachers tend to be concentrated in the high quintile schools and vice versa. The distinction between the lowest three quintiles and the top two quintiles is
148 | substantial. Therefore disadvantaged schools are deprived of highly qualified teachers. The standard deviation also shows that there is a lot of variation in teacher salary in the quintile 2 schools.