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.