Professor Servaas News Today

The coming teacher retirement wave will create a critical shortage, but this problem will be complicated by other factors, they say.

‘Pensions make up a very important part of social grants, it would mean that government spending on social grants would tend to rise, putting further pressure on our fiscal resources,’ says Servaas van der Berg, from the University of Stellenbosch.

A new Stellenbosch University study predicts that the South African public education system will see a massive wave of teacher retirements in 2030.

As many as 10 million adults and nearly three million children experienced hunger in the past week in South Africa in 2021, and 2.5 million adults and 600,000 children were experiencing perpetual hunger, hunger every day or almost every day.

School environments were viewed as potential super-spreaders, considering the amount of interaction among learners and teachers, and the frequent use of surfaces such as desks, boards and chairs. Learners also use communal toilets and taps for drinking water, hence it was feared that schools were dangerous places for the transmission of the virus.  The strategies focused on remote and mostly digital learning activities, including online learning, encouragement to read textbooks and listening t...