Roshila Pillay
British recruitment agencies are aggressively poaching South Africans to address the severe teacher shortage in that country.
The head of education personnel for Britain’s Department of Education, Chris Williams, will arrive in South Africa this month on yet another recruitment drive.
“They [the recruitment team] went last year, and they were really successful, so they are going to do it again,” says Michelle Jarvis, principal personnel officer for the British education department.
Teaching expertise is leaving South Africa fast and several schools are battling to find qualified teachers to fill posts. Experienced maths and science teachers are in very short supply.
“There is a mathematics and science expertise shortage it is now up to us to get out there and find them,” says John Lobben, the principal of King Edward Vll High School in Johannesburg.
Roger Cameron, principal of St John’s College in Johannesburg, agrees: “Although we have sufficient maths and science teachers, qualified maths and science teachers are more difficult to come by because these subjects are more richly rewarded when you are out of the teaching profession.”
Lobben had a mathematics teaching post available this year, and battled to fill it.
“I was looking for a maths teacher. I got one by the skin of my teeth with 48 hours to go [to the start of the school year].”
Britain has always relied heavily on teachers from Commonwealth countries. One of Britain’s biggest teacher supply agencies, TimePlan, has a branch in South Africa. Under the heading “Overseas teachers” its website reads: “What is important is that Headteachers [school principals] in the UK have the highest regard for South African teachers, whilst TimePlan does not discriminate between South African and UK/European teachers in either jobs or rates of pay.”
Karen Gamblin, the manager for TimePlan’s South African branch, reports “an overwhelming response to every ad we put in”.
Supply teaching, as it’s known in the industry, is a result of actions by Britain’s Labour Party to address education standards in the country. This includes reducing classroom numbers, instituting more stringent qualification requirements and moving the retirement age from 60 to 65.
The Labour Party offered a package deal for those who wanted to leave ahead of the new measures, prompting somewhere in the region of 65 000 teachers to take the package and leave.
Now Britain is shoring up shortage by recruiting teachers from around the world including South Africa.
“They earn up to 120 [about R1?400] a day. What they make there in a week, they only make here in a month,” says Robert Schipholt, a regional manager for Capita Education Resourcing. He explains that local teachers are attracted by the opportunity to broaden their horizons and learn more.
Professor Michael Kahn, the mini-sterial adviser on science, maths and technology, thinks the migration of teachers is beneficial to South Africa if they return to the country and utilise their newfound skills here.
“Personally, if teachers want to spend a year or two abroad, have the opportunity to engage with other curricula and then come home, I think that is beneficial to us.”
Out of the 38 000 matriculants who wrote the higher grade mathematics examination last year, 19 000 passed, with black students comprising only roughly 3 000 of that.
Only 5 000 black students passed the higher grade physical science examination 56 000 students wrote the examination.
A study by the Human Sciences Research Council, conducted in 1998/1999 and involving 194 schools and 8 147 grade eight pupils, found that less than 0,5% of South African pupils were among the top 10% of pupils internationally. South African pupils were compared to pupils in countries including Tunisia, Chile, England and the United States.
“We should see this in a global context and do our best to push ourselves forward,” says Kahn.
“If you view the BSc and postgraduate diploma as the cream of the [math and science] crop, South Africa produced only 100 maths teachers and 60 science teachers last year,” says Kahn.