Recent predictions of a shortage of educators are to be reviewed by a newly appointed ministerial committee. The committee on teacher education was appointed ‘to develop a National Framework for Teacher Education, which aims to develop coherence around existing policies and strategies to sustain a continuing professional development culture among teachers,” says Michael Samuel from […]

School principal Jackson Hadebe says he has about 60 orphans at his school. ‘Most of them are children whose parents died either of Aids-related diseases or just natural deaths, while others are children whose parents left to look for work in Johannesburg and haven’t returned since,” he says. Hadebe says some of these orphans have […]

The boys, aged between nine and 13, were allegedly also selling drugs at the school. They handed over 56 mandrax tablets they’d hidden in the school toilets to police, later leading them to two dealers at a nearby train station. Although the school’s principal refused to speak to the media about the matter, he confirmed […]

A Magaliesburg African National Congress councillor who started an independent school for underprivileged children is embroiled in a protracted legal battle after he allegedly failed to pay his teachers’ salaries. In May this year, the Teacher reported on Cornelius Cloete’s Magaliesburg Group of Schools, which has 275 learners. The 12 teachers currently employed at the […]

What would you do for a trip to one of the country’s famed national parks – with the added bonus of a photographic hamper that includes a camera? If you are lucky enough to be a South African learner, all you had to was be part of a team and come up with the most […]

A KwaZulu-Natal educator has not had a school to report to since March 2001 and his salary had been frozen since last November. He blames witchcraft and the incompetence of a district manager for his problems. Duduzela Yeni started teaching in 1986 and in 1992 was promoted to deputy principal of Mkhaliphi High School in […]

Paula Niel cannot take any of her four children to school because she does not have money to feed her family, let alone for expenses like their registration fees or school uniforms. She has repeatedly gone to the local school to beg the principal to allow her eldest son, Nathan and daughter, Felodine, to be […]

Mohlomi Dintsho, is a youngster with no faith in life and little hope in his future.The 15-year-old from Freedom Park in Gauteng prefers to stay home, smoke dagga and sniff glue, rather than go to school. He dropped out of school when he was 13 years old in Grade 6.Mohlomi and his sister were orphaned […]