National Professional Teachers' Organisation of South Africa

NAPTOSA; National And Professional Teachers' Organization of South Africa, is a Trade Union that was registered on 1 November 2006 by the Registrar of Labor Relations, in Gauteng, South Africa. NAPTOSA is recognized as the second largest union in the South African Education sector and consists of state employed members, School Governing bodies, College Councils and Independent School members, whose main purpose is to create a professional teachers learning base for the Nation and to provide and ensure a good education for its youth.

History

NAPTOSA combined with six other Trade Unions in the CTU; Combined Trade Union, called the ITU; the Independent Teachers' Union to increased communications and Professional Development Programs, amplify the number of staff to deal with members queries and grievances, in order to provide a wide range of structures and forums for members to state their thoughts, concerns and observations.

Logo

The NAPTOSA Logo was designed and created with the mentality that it would best suit and describe the purpose and objectives that the union stands to portray and achieve. The colour blue was chosen to symbolize industriousness, that is to show how the Trade Union approaches the Nations educational system and how it intends to transform the lives of the learners. The colour gold represents dignity, which is what they believe to have and would like to pass onto the public. The shield represents the African influence and the two shepherd crooks signify that teachers walk in front, leading the learners. The burning candle on the crest of the logo shows enlightenment, which can be described to be the primary task of the educator. There are also seven convergent panels at the base of the logo, which stand for the six independent unions (HOSPERSA, NAPTOSA, NATU, PEU, PSA and SAOU) and the NAPTOSA Federation to emphasize their bond as a single union.

Curriculum

The Trade Union has come across a number of challenges within the South African community, one of the most recent being that of them being that of creating a new curriculum document that will exclude the individual teaching of grammar as a single subject and instead blend it with the language and literature components of English Studies. This has had a great impact in the media and many concerns have been brought forward by the public stating whether this is a great change for future studies of a way to increase the pass rate in metric school. The media also points out that this may be the end of grammar being tought in schools.^[1]

References

1. ^ IOL News, 3rd March 2011

External links

• NAPTOSA