Minister Motshekga must clarify remarks encouraging retirement of teachers

The Minister of Basic Education, Angie Motshekga, must clarify her announcement that she has submitted a proposal to the National Treasury that all teachers 55 years of age and older will be incentivised to take early retirement without loss of benefits (see report).

Given the shortage of qualified teachers and the burden that these severance packages would place on an already stretched education budget, this suggestion seems highly inappropriate.

I have submitted a series of parliamentary questions to interrogate what Minister Motshekga means and why she thinks that encouraging good teachers to retire early will help improve our children's education.

On Friday, 17 February 2012 at the Human Development Cluster briefing at Parliament, Minister Motshekga made two claims: (1) that South Africa has an excess of teachers and (2) that older teachers should make way for "the younger generation which has ... better qualifications."

However, the evidence contradicts her claims.

Firstly, we have an under-supply of qualified teachers, not an excess. The South African Council for Educators estimates that, to maintain the present system, 15% of the current crop of matrics would need to join the teaching profession, instead of 3% as is the case now.

This is especially true in maths and sciences where the shortage of qualified teachers has reached crisis proportions. In response to a DA parliamentary question from 26 February 2010, the Minister herself acknowledged the backlog and went as far as to say that the Department was looking into re-appointing teachers who had previously taken severance packages and/or retired early.

So why is the Minister now encouraging experienced teachers to leave the profession?

Secondly, there is no evidence that younger teachers are "better qualified" than older ones. Research by the Centre for Development and Enterprise (CDE) suggests that approximately 46% of newly registered teachers in 2009/10 were under-qualified.

Instead of driving out good teachers, the Minister should be doing everything in her power to retain them. What we need are incentives to keep experienced teachers in the system, schemes to bring good teachers back from retirement and ways to get rid of teachers who don't perform.

Statement issued by Annette Lovemore MP, DA Shadow Minister of Basic Education, February 20 2012

Click here to sign up to receive our free daily headline email newsletter