THE CHALLENGE of not having enough money on the part of the government makes it impossible to hire the teachers needed in local schools. This problem is always presented as one of the challenges facing the Department of Basic Education, as unemployed teachers end up hanging around the offices looking for employment.
It has become common for young people to complain to the government about the lack of job opportunities in this sector.
And Professor Phumlani Myende, from the Department of Education at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, said that although he understands the concerns of young people who have degrees in this field but are not working, there are many challenges that lead to that situation.
Myende said that it is not that there are no more job opportunities in this field, but there are conditions that make the teacher recruitment process not happening in the right way as it happened in the past years, when teachers were being hired a lot.
“One of the problems that exist is that the government does not have enough money to hire and pay the number of teachers needed in schools in the country, that is proven by the fact that according to the law, the classrooms must have 35 children in each room, but in some schools there are 60 students, even more.”
He said:“All that is a sign that the existing problem is so big, that in some schools it is possible that there are teachers who are forced to teach subjects they are not trained to teach because of the government’s lack of money.”
Continuing, he said that in a study conducted by Stellenbosch University in 2022 to 2024, it was revealed that another problem that exists is that there are a lot of people who are trained in the field of teaching, but they are assigned to courses that are no longer needed in schools.
“Also, there is a problem of teachers who are trained to teach high school courses when it is obvious that the teachers who are most needed will be teaching in the primary schools, which many people seem to ignore,” said Myende.
He also revealed that higher education institutions must review the way they have organized teaching courses, they should no longer be mixed in a way that makes it difficult for a person to get a job after studying.
“Children should not be encouraged to choose the right fields, which will help them earn a living and be useful to the needs of the time we live in now. It will not be easy for a person to be disappointed with studies that do not know where he will work once he has completed them.”
He said that even those who are trained in the teaching sector and other fields, must know and understand that not everyone will be lucky enough to be employed, so maybe it would be good to start now and look for other life strategies.