Western Cape Education MEC David Maynier said they would not tolerate intimidation at schools by political parties. Picture: Independent Newspapers Archive
Cape Town - Education MEC David Maynier said they would not tolerate intimidation at schools by political parties, as news spread that a complaint was lodged against him with the Speaker of Parliament concerning claims that he “secretly” excluded 400 schools from the 2 407 teacher cuts in the province.
In response to the claims, Maynier’s spokesperson, Kerry Mauchline, said: “The claims made by the consultant are categorically false. Posts are allocated to schools using a post provisioning model, which is a formula provided by the national government, according to the Personnel Administration Measures for Educators as issued by the Department of Basic Education.
“The model takes into account class sizes, the workload of teachers, the size of the school, language, curriculum, poverty, and other factors.
“Only special needs schools were excluded from the reduction in posts, given the nature of their teaching and learning environment, as we announced last year.”
The Western Cape has been the hardest hit by the teacher cuts.
The Western Cape Education Department (WCED) earlier revealed they had 1 468 public schools in the province with 1 206 070 learners enrolled and 20 213 at seven Special Needs schools with 34 728 teachers.
The department said they hoped to complete nine new schools and 265 additional classrooms in the year 2025.
In a media statement, National Coloured Congress (NCC) member in the legislature, Dwayne Jacobs, said he lodged the complaint against Maynier.
“During Parliament sittings in August and September 2024, Parliament was informed that 2 407 teaching posts will end on December 31 2024,” he said.
“The House was informed that this is unavoidable and all schools will have to adapt to this.
“When the school year started this was proven to be a crisis and reports of 96 kids in a class were received and confirmed.
“On January 21, 2025, the NCC learned that more than 400 schools were exempted from this educator cut, in what was deemed a ‘secret’ agreement.
“This is contrary to what was tabled in Parliament.”
Jacobs added: “We learned about this shocking information on January 21. I laid a complaint against the MEC with the Speaker of Parliament as its clear the MEC, willing and knowingly misled Parliament on this matter, we will not allow the coloured child to be the DAs toy.
“The NCC will follow this up with the Speaker and will demand that this be corrected.”
This follows the Cape Argus exclusive article this week, which revealed that 96 Grade 3 children were accommodated inside the media room at Sunray Primary School in Delft. Soon after the article, the matter was resolved.
Brett Herron, GOOD Party secretary-general, said they were shocked by the claims that 400 schools were excluded from teacher cuts.
“In stark contrast, the heaviest cuts were borne by former HOR (House of Representatives) schools, which predominantly serve black and coloured learners,” he said.
“Unsurprisingly, these schools are largely concentrated in Q1 to Q3, the province's most under-resourced categories.
“Yet the WCED pushes the narrative that Q5 schools are suffering cuts, conveniently ignoring the massive scale of losses in poorer areas.
“As GOOD we demand the Western Cape Education MEC, David Maynier to provide the rationale of how the post cuts were allocated.”