Revealed: These are the provinces with the most unqualified teachers

Minister of Education Angie Motshekga revealed that the Cape provinces are employing most of the unqualified and under-qualified teachers in South Africa in a written reply to a parliamentary question from the Democratic Alliance.

READ: Motshekga plans to rebuild SA education system – with English ‘on its way out’

1575 UNQUALIFIED AND UNDER-QUALIFIED TEACHERS

The DA’s shadow education minister Baxolile Nodada asked Motshekga about the number of under-qualified educators who have been identified for their positions in 2019, 2020, and 2021.

To qualify as a teacher, educators must possess matric along with a three-year professional qualification and be clued up about subject matter and methodology.

Motshekga said under-qualified teachers are educators who “are professionally qualified both in terms of subject matter and methodology” but do not possess the required “matric plus three-year professional requirement.” Whereas unqualified teachers are educators that have neither academic nor professional qualifications but have a matric certificate.

As of 2022, most new educators possess a four-year qualification and earn a minimum of R284 238 per annum. For comparison, those with three years of study get R214 908. The remuneration increases as teachers gain experience.

Motshekga revealed that the number of under-qualified teachers employed by the department is decreasing – 912 were employed in 2019; 706 in 2020 and 547 in 2021.

Nodada also asked for a specific breakdown of the teachers that are under-qualified and unqualified per district and province.

 The detailed information – at a school level – was not published on the Parliamentary Monitoring Group (PMG) website, however, a summary showed how many unqualified and under-qualified are employed in each province as of December 2021.

Motshekga said 218 of the educators in the table below are permanent employees.

PROVINCE	UNQUALIFIED (a) (I)(ii)	UNDER-QUALIFIED (b)(i)(ii)	TOTAL
EASTERN CAPE	29	132	161
FREE STATE	44	40	84
GAUTENG	8	62	70
KWAZULU/NATAL	123	15	138
LIMPOPO	1	17	18
MPUMALANGA	56	32	88
NORTH WEST	3	84	87
NORTHERN CAPE	308	10	318
WESTERN CAPE	456	155	611
TOTAL	1 028	547	1 575

The DA’s shadow education minister asked Motshekga what the education department is doing to “compel” the affected educators to go for further education and upskill themselves in their missing subject knowledge and qualifications.

The minister replied:

“Over the years the Department has implemented various programmes, particularly, to assist un-and-under-qualified educators to improve their qualifications. The National Professional Diploma was implemented as an interim qualification for the purpose of upgrading under-qualified educators.”

Earlier this month, Nodada questioned the minister about the number of vacant teaching posts in each province and she said there were 10 0667 teaching post level 1 vacancies in the country out of a total of 310 538 posts, as of December 2021.

PROVINCE	All PL1 Teachers	Number of PL1 vacancies	Vacancy rate
EASTERN CAPE	44 054	4 777	10.8%
FREE STATE	17 172	121	0.7%
GAUTENG	54 863	87	0.2%
KWAZULU/NATAL	72 037	2 237	3.1%
LIMPOPO PROVINCE	40 828	3 219	7.9%
MPUMALANGA	26 850	74	0.3%
NORTHERN CAPE	7 236	23	0.3%
NORTH WEST	21 786	89	0.4%
WESTERN CAPE	25 712	40	0.2%
Grand Total	310 538	10 667	3.4%