The Jakes Gerwel Fellowship’s Jeremy Gibson says losing half of South Africa’s teachers over the next ten years to retirement is a crisis. It is estimated that universities would need to double its annual teacher graduate output between now and 2030 to deal with the looming shortage of teachers.
Gibson believes that this could serve as a great opportunity to improve education outcomes in the country while addressing the predicted teacher shortage. This will be achieved by ensuring that the best people are employed as teachers.
However, before this can happen, the profession of teaching must be more attractive to young people. Data collected from a survey found that as much as 49% of teachers working in the South Africa said the teaching profession was not their first choice for a career.
Gibson adds that it is important to support newly qualified teachers when they enter the classroom. This is a crucial aspect for positive learner and education outcomes in South Africa.
The Jakes Gerwel Fellowship developed a two-year newly qualified teacher program to support teachers in their first two years of teaching. They believe that well supported teachers will form good foundations for what could be a long career in the teaching profession.
He said, “The schools can and will be turned around by the quality of leadership and the quality of teachers and so we need to attract the best people into teaching. It needs to become a national imperative that we look for the very best to teach our children and we then work really hard with them to develop them into the best teachers they can be”.
Gibson adds that they plan to work closely with the government to develop demand models to determine which grades new teachers are needed in and which subjects they must specialise in. Once this is understood, roleplayers will be able to have a major impact on improving education in the country.
To increase the number of teachers, the Jakes Gerwel fellowship also provides full scholarships to graduates to obtain a Postgraduate Certificate in Education (PGCE).
A PGCE is one of the two qualifications needed to be classified as a qualified teacher in South Africa. The other qualification individuals can pursue is a Bachelor of Education degree.
