Recent statistics have shown that each year more teachers are leaving the profession than entering it. Dire conditions and low pay at many South African schools have qualified teachers looking to use their skills elsewhere.
According to Paul Esterhuizen, CEO of NGO School-Days, the Department of Basic Education (DBE) is not hiring enough teachers to keep up with the number of those expected to leave the profession each year. Additionally, school budgets are also severely constrained, making hiring new teachers a challenge.
Teachers' salaries are based on their qualifications and experience, so those earning the highest salaries are approaching retirement age. Roughly half (49%) of South African teachers are expected to be of retirement age, which would see the teacher shortage becoming an even more dire situation over the next decade.
However, the DBE disagrees with these teacher shortage predictions.
DBE spokesperson, Elijah Mhlanga, claims that the Department needs more funding, not more teachers. He further claims that there is actually an oversupply of teachers, with newly-qualified teachers emerging continuously.
Esterhuizen also states that Education degrees have some of the lowest entry requirements. If education is not a difficult degree to get accepted into, then the wrong students are being attracted to the field.
Higher performing students are less likely to pursue a profession if the entry requirements are so low. However, it is a more attractive field of study for learners who are underperforming.
Apart from poor working conditions, matric students generally have poor results, with one in five students expected to fail. Those who achieve these low results, often end up applying to study education as it is an easier degree to be accepted to in comparison to other degrees like science or business.
Esterhuizen goes on to say that to combat this issue, the country needs to incentivise teaching to make it a more attractive option for higher-performing students. If students are succeeding academically, it is unlikely that they are going to enter a workforce where they are not earning well when they have better options available.
Suggestions have been made that teachers' salaries should be based on the performance of their students, however, there are many issues with this method that has previously been practiced in other countries.
Dr Sara Black, lecturer at the School of Education at King's College in London, weighed in on the suggestion and states that if teachers feel as if they are being financially punished for their student's results, they are going to be pushed out of the field. There are other factors that will contribute to a learner's marks, not just the skills of the educator. A poor teacher to pupil ratio and learning difficulties are factors that can will affect results.
Newly qualified teachers often leave the profession after three to five years because of poor conditions in many of our schools, such as overcrowded classrooms and poor pay. Therefore those that can get out of the profession will usually take the chance.
Teacher's salaries are very low at the beginning of their career, making it an unattractive path for many. Black adds that when first entering the profession, many young teachers will struggle to pay their rent.
The government also needs to make teaching more attractive for young people, with more liveable salaries.
Esterhuizen suggests that if we want to attract higher performing learners to education degrees, we need to increase the entry requirements and increase salaries.
Each year, it is estimated that we need an additional 20,000 new teachers to maintain our current teacher-to-pupil ratio. Classrooms across the country are extremely overcrowded, so to deal with this, we would need even more newly-qualified teachers entering the profession annually.
However, oftentimes the supply is not meeting the demand and on top of thta, the Government does not have adequate funds to employ more teachers.
