under-qualified teachers Barry Streek Minister of Education Kader Asmal told Parliament last week that South Africa has 85 501 unqualified or under-qualified teachers, about 80% of whom are primary school teachers in farm and rural areas. The worst-affected province is KwaZulu-Natal with more than a quarter of the unqualified and under-qualified teachers 20 853. Asmal was responding to a question tabled in the National Assembly by Andre Gaum (DA/NNP). The number of unqualified and under-qualified teachers in the other provinces is: 18 716 in the Eastern Cape, 14 682 in North West, 10?595 in the Northern Province, 6?537 in Free State, 5 651 in Mpumalanga, 4?614 in Gauteng, 2?722 in the Western Cape and 1 131 in the Northern Cape. Effectively, this means the ”poorest of the poor” in the rural areas and in the least-resourced provinces have the least-qualified teachers. Asmal said his department had identified the upgrading of the qualifications of these teachers as one of the major priorities for the next five years. He said his department has drawn up detailed plans to this end and an interim qualification, the national professional diploma in education, to be implemented in 2001, has been registered with the South African Qualifications Authority. ”In 2001 the upgrading of unqualified and under-qualified teachers will focus on an intake of 10 000 teachers under the age of 50, drawn mainly from farm and rural schools. R50-million will be made available to these teachers in the form of bursaries.”
He said a further R23-million has been offered by the Dutch government to assist higher education institutions to develop relevant programmes as well as to develop capacity in these institutions.