CAPE TOWN – An education expert warns that South Africa will have a shortage of teachers by 2030.
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The concern comes after the Western Cape Department of Education announced that 2,400 teachers on its payroll will lose their jobs in January next year.
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The department blames the massive reduction of educators in the province to the National Treasury’s 3.8 billion rand budget shortfall imposed on the province for the next three financial years.
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According to recent research by the University of Zululand, the country produces 15,000 new teachers every year while 18,000 to 22,000 teachers are leaving the profession.
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The University of Stellenbosch education faculty dean, Professor Mbulu Madiba, says South Africa is failing to absorb a cohort of teachers being produced by institutions.
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“If this is a situation that we facing as a country, then it’s negotiated and discussed. Sometimes you can go to a point of saying ‘look, do we take salary increase or we really need to keep our salaries as they are, or do we take more teachers’. I mean it’s give and take. What must go, what we must keep? The most important thing is that we need to have a teacher in front of the learner.”
EWN
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