Each year Nansindlela is faced with the challenge of finding suitably qualified and experienced educators and then of finding the money to pay them. Based on the government’s criteria for funding educator salaries only 6 of the school’s 11 educators are paid out of government funds.

There are several factors affecting the government’s allocation of funding:

• Nansindlela grows by one grade each year as the highest grade approaches matric. Our first matrics will be the class of 2003. However, the government’s allocation calculations are based on the previous year’s learner census (PPN) resulting in at least one post shortage per year.  

• In the early years class sizes were very small. As a result the higher grades are currently a lot smaller than the lower grades. Increasing those class sizes has proved difficult since potential candidates have not been able to prove their ability to cope academically without seriously affecting the attention available to current learners. These smaller class sizes obviously affect the government’s calculations.  

• Based on our experience class sizes of greater than 30 learners are not conducive to the high standard to which we aspire. The government’s allocations are currently targeted towards higher class sizes which will always count against our overall allocation until government reduces the learner/educator ratio to their ultimate goal of 32:1.  

• Our pre-school grades are currently not recognised and are therefore not resourced by the government. We have been informed that this recognition is imminent which will certainly ease our burden in the long run.

Over time Nansindlela’s overall post shortage will diminish as the current senior classes get past matric but we will always be somewhat affected by our class size differences with the government.

The total staff also includes class assistants, administrative and maintenance personnel.

Parents in this community can only afford to pay so much in school fees and we do believe that our school fees cannot be increased any further over the short term. They are already significantly more than other schools’ in the area.

In the short term we are therefore faced with the following challenge: Our expected income from school fees and bursary donors is only R120,730 whilst our expected salary bill for the six months ended December 2001 is approximately R182,950. Total budgeted running costs are R234,640.

Historically Nansindlela has relied upon outside educators offering their services to the school on a largely voluntary basis. In recent times indicative salaries have ranged from R2,000 to R3,500 per month. Generally these people have only been able to afford to stay with us for 6 months to a year. As the school grows each year the challenge of finding these suitably qualified and philanthropic educators increases.

In order to simply maintain our standard and then to achieve our vision of becoming a training centre in the area we believe that we need to begin increasing the package that we offer, starting with an increase from January 2002 to R5,500 per month plus a 13^th cheque. This merely brings the package into line with that offered by the government to temporary teachers with a 3-year teaching diploma. However, it should help us to recruit and retain suitable educators for longer than we have been able to in the past.

The effect of the salary increase and our growing staff requirements on the budget for 2002 is that our overall salary bill is expected to increase to R680,050 whilst our expected income from school fees and bursary donors is only expected to increase to R385,570.

We are therefore appealing for assistance in meeting our salary bill for the remainder of 2001 as well as sponsorship for the external educators that we aim to recruit for 2002 and beyond until our funding relationship with the government normalizes. The cost of sponsoring one educator for 2002 amounts to R71,500.

If you are interested in contributing towards our teacher fund then please email us at teacher.support@nansindlela.org. If you are resident in the UK then please visit our UK Charity page to find out how your donation can go that much further. (Click Here)