The Citizen reports that SA’s education system is facing a crisis due to the retirement over the next 10 years of its most experienced teachers – and this will make the country’s current dire skill shortages even worse.

And it will be almost impossible to fill that knowledge and skills gap because current teaching programmes, especially distance learning, are compromising the quality of teachers coming into the system. CEO at the Institute of Risk Management SA (IRMSA) Pat Semenya said SA was simply not keeping up because when the exodus occurred, it would help create another significant hurdle to the overall economic growth and recovery. The IRMSA’s 2022 Risk Report paints a picture of the dire situation, noting that “due to national policy and curriculum misalignments, limited focus on skills that are and will be in demand and poor adoption of digitalisation, SA does not have the skills it needs at the time that it needs them”. The report explains how there is not enough focus on these deeply ingrained structural issues in the skills economy and the failure to address these issues will result in economic collapse. Semenya also said structural issues could not be dealt with by thinking in the short term, as the key to tackling the skills shortage lay in sustainable solutions. However, Department of Basic Education spokesperson Elijah Mhlanga insisted there was no crisis whatsoever, saying the department had planned for teacher recruitment and training using a whole range of measures. “Ten years ago, the crisis was predicted to happen in 10 years’ time and where we stand now we have more teachers than we can employ. The department has recruitment strategies that enable it to continue to attract teachers that should keep the system going,” he claimed.

• Read the full original of the report in the above regard by Reitumetse Makwea at The Citizen (subscriber access only)

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