Cape Town - The looming jobs bloodbath for teachers in the Western Cape has pushed young professionals to explore opportunities of working abroad.
A private employee who has been assisting teachers to connect with recruiters in South East Asia, said while recruiting teachers from South Africa was not new, there has been a bold increase in jobs enquires over the past few weeks.
This comes after the Western Cape Education Department (WCED) announced at the end of August that it was forced to shed 2 400 teacher posts in 2025 due to budget cuts.
“We have been getting enquiries from all over SA, especially from young people with the average age of 30,” said Trevor Davids, who assists teachers to connect with recruiters.
“There was also an enquiry from two groups that teach as couples.”
He said while South Africa had a substantial recruitment pool for places like Asia and Europe, there were strict criteria to meet before being accepted for an interview.
The WCED said the decision to cut teacher posts was made after they were short-changed by the national government; they only received 64% of the cost of the nationally negotiated wage agreement, leaving the province to fund the remaining 36%.
The national decision would also leave them with a three-year shortfall of R3.8 billion.
Teachers who spoke to the Cape Argus on condition of anonymity, said their only safety net was to take their skills abroad.
A teacher who has worked on contract for more than a year said: “We are living in constant fear and wonder, ‘will I be next?’”.
The teacher said he and his affected colleagues and friends have applied to work overseas.
“It is really stressful not having stability, you don’t know when you will no longer be able to pay rent, and for how long you will be unemployed again.”
Another teacher said the job insecurity pushed teachers to work abroad.
“We will lose quality teachers, especially newly qualified teachers who would contribute so many new and innovative ideas to improve the quality of teaching and progress of learners in school.”
Department of Basic Education spokesperson, Elijah Mhlanga, said it should be accepted that some qualified but unemployed teachers would explore opportunities in other parts of the world.
“Our experience is that those who leave to take up employment in other countries return to South Africa with the experience that our country needs to improve teaching practice.
“It also confirms that our education system equips our youth with skills that help them to teach anywhere in the world,” he said.
However, provincial head for the Educators and Allied Workers’ Union of SA (Eusa), André de Bruyn, said the government lost its investment when teachers went to teach abroad.
“We need to keep young qualified teachers in SA for at least five years to work back the investment of the state.
“We need teachers, we need posts and we need the budget to make teaching as inviting as it used to be.”
WCED spokesperson, Bronagh Hammond, said in 2023/24, 2 161 teachers left the WCED for reasons such as death, retirement, transfers, or resignation, while 61, which is the highest number in eight years, left for emigration, for reasons such as better remuneration or marriage.
“There is always movement in the system. The numbers indicating ‘emigration’ are small, but numbers could be skewed as per the reasons above.”