According to research conducted by the Research on Socio-Economic Policy Group, studies show that currently, half of the teachers publicly employed within South African schools are above the age of 50, meaning retirement is in their near future, leaving classrooms without educators.
To solve this problem, younger qualified educators will need to fill their positions to ensure that schools and learners are equipped with educators to continue teaching.
Professor Nick Spaull, from the Research on Socio-Economic Policy Group, stated that they are concerned that 49% of public school teachers are older than 50, and are going to retire in the next 10 years. The worry is whether or not the current policies that are in place are proactive enough to handle this.
What has sometimes been labelled as a "teacher shortage" has been in discussion for months now, but unemployed and qualified teachers have outwardly stated that there is no shortage; they simply aren't finding employment.
The Department of Basic Education (DBE) has said that there are "tens of thousands" of vacant teaching posts across the country, but simultaneously, there are qualified teachers who continue to remain unemployed. In order to replace the educators set to retire within the next ten years, employment opportunities will need to be made available.
In 2012, the average learner-to-teacher ratio was 27 learners to one teacher. In 2021, the average learner-to-teacher ratio was 30 learners to one teacher. However, in rural areas, these numbers are a lot higher, with about 40 to 60 learners to one teacher.
Since government is not hiring enough teachers, class sizes are on the rise, and unless provinces begin to increase the number of teachers they hire, the problem will become much worse.
"Although we [South Africa] are producing the right amount of teachers at the moment, we aren't actually hiring enough of those teachers to maintain class sizes at their current levels; so we're starting to see class sizes rise, because provinces are not hiring the teachers that universities are producing and that's a really big problem, and it's one that's likely to get even worse as more and more teachers retire," explains Spaull.
The frustrations of these unemployed, yet qualified, educators was recently voiced through a protest held outside the Department's Head Offices in Pretoria on 5 December, 2022, where the group demanded that Basic Education Minister, Angie Motshekga, immediately address the issue.
Spaull believes that the low rate of educators (only about 50% are gaining employment) who are hired by provinces, will be a problem for rural provinces such as Limpopo, Mpumalanga, Eastern Cape, and rural areas of KwaZulu-Natal, because many teachers prefer to find employment and teach in urban areas.
In order to get more teachers employed within these rural areas, the DBE will need to find ways to motivate graduates to relocate and provide those learners with education of a good quality.
To combat the wave of retirement South Africa is expected to soon face, universities will have to double their current output of qualified teachers to cope with the loss of teachers that will be retiring over the coming decade.
If government only wants to replace the teachers that are retiring, then 25 000 teachers will need to be hired per year, which is the current number of teachers being produced per year.
Government also needs to consider that there will be more learners entering the system due to population increases, and more learners reaching Grade 12 due to lower dropout rates.
These factors will require that 56 000 teachers be hired per year. Currently, universities are producing approximately 28 000 teachers per year.
However, according to Mmusi Maimane, Leader of the Build One South Africa political party, the administrative challenges that these qualified yet unemployed educators have to go through, is what it makes it impossible for them to gain employment.
He added that the teachers are set up by nothing else but the DBE, saying that the process of employing teachers is taking way too long, is becoming too cumbersome and schools are becoming more and more crowded as the issue remains unresolved.
