Abstract:
The main objective of every school should be to provide quality teaching and learning. To be able to achieve these goals, a school needs adequate resources. Quality educators are vital in this regard. According to Clarke (2009) in “School Management&Leadership”, Graham Hall of the Wits School of Education estimates that South Africa needs to recruit at least 20 000 teachers a year. This number merely serves to replace those teachers who leave the system annually. Since local training institutions deliver only 7 500 qualified teachers every year, it means that there is an annual shortfall of 12 500 (Clarke, 2009). The challenge of teacher shortages needs to be addressed urgently. One option may be to give aspirant teachers the opportunity to do in-service training, also known as school-based educator training or an internship. However, this creates new challenges –one of which is that different role players need to take responsibility for this method of teacher training. The involvement of the school is obvious, because it plays host to these students. Many schools reacted positively to the request made by the Department of Education to assist with educator training. This unfortunately resulted in such schools burdening their already overworked workforce with even more responsibility. Furthermore, although a school may be willing to contribute to teacher training by accommodating and assisting student teachers, it cannot be assumed that its management will act responsibly and accountably. Only limited guidelines, regulations and prescriptions for managing the student training programme exist at this stage. This means that every school acts in good faith and hopes that it will hit the target. The limited nature of these regulations also allows for the school-based educator training programme to be easily mismanaged or even misused. A more streamlined, uniform system is needed, without limiting the creativity of schools.
