Abstract
M.Ed. (Educational Management)
Mokgalane (Mokone, 1999: 7) asserts that the implementation of the new PPN in
1998 represented different things to different people. For educators affected by the
process, it represented a life of uncertainty, possibilities of being shifted from one
school to another and a great number of sad stories of an uncertain future in
education. However, for educator unions and the government, it represented the
opportunity to redress past injustices by equitably and fairly distributing educational
human resources. The motivation for the new PPN thus appears to have been political
and not based on educational criteria — a situation that would be untenable.
Although the implementation of the new PPN had good objectives in principle,
namely to provide a fair basis for the staffing of schools to redress the injustices of the
past, it directly and indirectly affected the educators' work values, namely security,
good working conditions, a reasonable learner-educator ratio, good interpersonal
relations, opportunities for advancement, a reasonable work load, the status of the
teaching profession, good quality supervision, support by educational authorities, and
good mental and physical health. During the implementation of the new PPN, newly
appointed educators were appointed on a month-to-month basis, which meant their
appointment was temporary. Even permanently appointed educators were not certain
about their future in their schools because they could be moved whenever the new
PPN indicated that some of them had to be declared in excess and had to be redeployed.
In addition workloads had to increase in schools where the number of
allocated educator posts decreased.
The result of this was that relations between affected educators and principals became
strained. Further to this teacher salaries could not increase reasonably because of the
emphasis on cutting departmental expenditure. Affected educators felt the Department
of Education did not have their interests at heart. All these factors reduced the work
satisfaction of educators with the result that many teachers engaged in routinised
defensive teaching to compensate for the lack of support, and to avoid criticism and
possible termination because they did not have the necessary skills to perform
alternative jobs (Steyn & Van Wyk, 1999:39; Weisberg 1994: 125). They were less
dependable, less committed and often disloyal to the Department (Byars & Rue,
2000:304). This was indicated by, among other things, high rates of turnover,
absenteeism, tardiness, excessive stress, burnout, and late coming among educators.