POLICY BRIEF - DEMAND AND SUPPLY OF TEACHERS IN SOUTH AFRICA

POLICY BRIEF DEMAND AND SUPPLY OF TEACHERS IN SOUTH AFRICA 01 OVERVIEW A recent report by Van der Berg, Gustafsson, and Burger (2022)1, commissioned by the Department of Higher Education and Training (DHET), shows that South Africa will face a massive shortage of teachers in the next 10 years. [...] O2 MAIN FINDINGS 2.1 Roughly half of publicly paid teachers in South Africa will retire in the next 10 years Analysis of PERSAL2 data shows that 48% of publicly paid teachers in South Africa are 50 years or older and will therefore exit the teaching profession in the next 10 years (see Figure 1). [...] 2.2 The demand for new teachers will double in the next 10 years The projections indicate that to meet the future demand for teachers, the annual production of Grade 1 to 12 teachers will need to increase from a current level of around 30 540 to 59 034 by 2030 (see Figure 1). [...] This may be of considerable value in flattening the curve of the demand that has to be met by raising production of teacher graduates. [...] The advantage of such an approach is that teachers could be imported for limited contract periods to assist in the period when the annual supply of new teachers produced by the university system is under strain, and such contracts could be planned to run out in the subsequent period, when the need for new teachers to join the public service is reduced.