Concern Over Future of Education in South Africa

A report by the Africa Governance Monitoring and Advocacy Project and the Open Society Foundation for South Africa on the country's education and health sectors highlights the link between education and HIV/AIDS. According to the report, high HIV/AIDS prevalence among teachers could have dire implications for the future of education in South Africa.

"An estimated 12.7 percent of educators were HIV-positive in 2005, a figure with serious implications for attrition and absentee rates in the future," the report said. "The current recruitment and training of new teachers is not keeping abreast with these developments."

The report said teachers face many problems in human resource management. "[Problems] range from extreme inequalities in the distribution of resources that are still the inheritance of apartheid, to a physically stressful teaching environment characterized by too much work, too few teachers, and a high incidence of violence in schools," the study revealed.

The report said HIV/AIDS aggravates such problems, with studies indicating a need to replace 20,000 teachers each year. This is a "massive problem" since department figures indicate only some 5,000 to 7,000 new teachers are being trained every year, it noted.

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