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A group of 16 RESEP researchers is currently engaged in a 3-year project focusing on the incoming wave of teacher retirements. The project is called the Teacher Demographic Dividend (TDD), is funded by the Allan & Gill Gray Philanthropy (AGGP) and the FEM Education Foundation (FEMEF) and will run from 2022 to 2024. It has been formally endorsed by the Director General of the Department of Basic Education.

On the 10th of November this year RESEP hosted a policy dialogue in Pretoria with key policymakers from national and provincial government departments, including the Department of Basic Education, Department of Higher Education and National Treasury, with the aim of sharing the research findings from the first year of the project. Policymakers asked questions about the research and made comments and suggestions for future areas of research. These reports are now publicly available (1 Dec 2022).

The findings from the first year of the research are summarized in the Synthesis of Findings (Policy Notes 1-11) report which is based on four longer reports:

  1. Projections of Educators by Age and Average Cost to 2070 (Gustafsson, 2022) — (Click here for the full report and here for the Excel model).
  2. The Teacher Labour Market and Pay (Shepherd, 2022a)
  3. Teachers’ level of education and employment over the last two decades (Shepherd, 2022b)
  4. The Quality of Primary Mathematics Teacher Preparation in SA (Roberts & Moloi, 2022)

 

The Policy Notes are also available as separate documents below:

  • Note 1: How many teachers will retire by 2030? (PDF)
  • Note 2: Teacher production, class size & learner population growth (PDF)
  • Note 3: To what extent are provinces freezing HOD & Deputy Principal posts? (PDF)
  • Note 4: Are provinces hiring the additional teachers universities produce? (PDF)
  • Note 5: Which universities produce the most teachers who enter public schools? (PDF)
  • Note 6: How many teachers are universities producing? (PDF)
  • Note 7: What do teachers earn? (PDF)
  • Note 8: Where do teachers fall relative to others in the labour market? (PDF)
  • Note 9: What are the matric marks of those entering ITE programs? (PDF)
  • Note 10: What are the levels of in-service teacher knowledge? (PDF)
  • Note 11: The Quality of Primary Mathematics Teacher Preparation in SA (PDF)

For queries about the project please email silker@nullsun.ac.za