Govt schools face major teacher deficit as half of current educators will retire in 10 years

SA will lose nearly half of its current crop of publicly employed teachers to retirement in the next 10 years — and the country is nowhere close to training enough people to replace them.

A report from the 2030 Reading Panel shows that universities need to produce 44,000 teachers a year by 2025 to ensure there is no deficit.

The 2030 Reading Panel is a group of South African leaders convened by former deputy president Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka. It includes former vice-chancellor and professor at Stellenbosch University Jonathan Jansen, deputy vice-chancellor for teaching and learning at the University of Zululand professor Vuyokazi Nomlomo, Archbishop Thabo Makgoba, former AngloGold Ashanti CEO Bobby Godsell, former National Treasury official and Wits adjunct professor Michael Sachs, educational economist professor Nic Spaull and 11 others from academic and activist backgrounds.

Their job is to answer the question: “What needs to change for us to ensure that all children learn to read by 2030?” The panel will meet once a year until 2030.

According to its report, the biggest trend that could affect the 2030 reading goal is the looming wave of teacher retirements.

• 13,085: The number of Funza Lushaka bursaries awarded for 2021

• 44,000: The number of teachers needed by 2025

—  In numbers:

The panel says it has “been known in technical policymaking circles for some time now” that the teacher workforce “has been steadily ageing over time, with a critical mass approaching retirement age in the next decade”.

“The National Treasury reports that 45% of all publicly employed teachers in 2020/21 were 50 years or older and will therefore retire in the next 10 years. This is an unprecedented development and there is currently no systematic plan to address it.”

The panel estimates that retirements are set to double in the next five years and that universities need to “drastically increase” the production of teachers to keep up.

“In 2018 universities in SA produced 26,000 teachers, but this will need to increase to 44,000 teachers per year by 2025 and 50,000 per year by 2030 to avoid large increases in class sizes or unqualified teachers being recruited to fill vacancies.”

In April, during a parliamentary question and answer session, the department of basic education said the national vacancy rate of teachers was 5.8% (24,556) at the end of February 2021.

Responding to a question from Chantel King of the DA, basic education minister Angie Motshekga said provincial education departments were redeploying teachers that were additional to the allocated posts at some schools to schools that have vacancies.

However, the department said this does not mean there is an actual shortage of teachers, nor does it mean pupils are being left unattended.

“It simply means the process of finalising the appointment of the people currently in the posts is ongoing.”

In denying the shortage, the department said about 25,000 teachers were unable to be employed because of a lack of capacity to absorb them all.

The department did not respond to queries on the deficit, the report or the specific training of teachers.