![Sample our Education journals, sign in here to start your access, latest two full volumes FREE to you for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5932/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Education.jpg"})
Whilst the migration of teachers has been a phenomenon for hundreds of years, the advent of ‘globalisation’ has seen such migration return to prominence. This article focuses on the experiences of two developing countries in Southern Africa which have been on different ends of the process: South Africa as a net sender of teachers and Botswana as a net receiver of teachers. In comparing these two country experiences it is possible to highlight the complexity and impact of teacher mobility in developing countries. The authors argue that, in both cases, there are signs that international teacher mobility may have been a temporary issue as local markets in both countries have adjusted to meet the new demand. A possible conclusion is that the significance of international teacher mobility for developing country education systems lies less in its quantitative effects in terms of numbers of trained teachers and more in its qualitative effects in terms of the kind of teachers that move.
Acknowledgements
This article is one output from the project ‘Teacher Mobility, Brain Drain, Labour Markets and Educational Resources in the Commonwealth’, funded by the United Kingdom’s Department for International Development. Carol Bertram, Nithi Muthikrishna and Volker Wedekind at the University of KwaZulu‐Natal and Kgosi Motshabi, Botswana Educational Research Association at the University of Botswana, all provided invaluable assistance with the data collection and contributed to our thinking on these issues.
Notes
1. Unemployment rates are much lower for highly skilled South Africans than the country as a whole. For example, Kingdon and Knight (2001) report unemployment rates of 4–6% (depending on definition) among South Africans with higher education in 1994.
2. By law, no state school may exclude pupils who do not pay fees. However, state schools serving more affluent communities are still able to collect substantial fee revenues.
3. The decline in student numbers is thought to be due to falling enrolment rates, perhaps due to HIV/Aids with children either directly infected or dropping out of school due to increased financial pressures.
4. Wages for teachers in South Africa were anyway well below those in the UK.
5. Up to 2001, universities offered PGCEs (Postgraduate Certificates in Education) whilst teacher training colleges offered four‐year diplomas. Subsequently, all teacher training was to be done in HEIs. For example, in KwaZulu‐Natal, the province that the fieldwork for this article was conducted in, there used to be 17 teacher training colleges. Fifteen of these colleges were shut down in 2001, with two being incorporated into HEIs. This left the University of KwaZulu‐Natal as the only provider of teacher training in the province.
6. This information was provided by Dr Labby Ramrathan of the University of KwaZulu‐Natal in an interview on Monday 26 July 2004.
7. It was reported that: ‘The Department of Education estimates that it will need more than 6800 mathematics teachers, almost double the number now in the system, to meet its plans to introduce mathematics as a compulsory subject for grades 10–12’ (www.newsdirectory.com, 28 August 2003).
8. Currently, all children attend the primary and community junior secondary schools and there is provision for approximately 50% of children to enter senior secondary schools.
9. These figures were kindly supplied by the TSM, Ministry of Education, Botswana during a fieldwork visit in 2004.
10. Schools were racially segregated under apartheid and separately administered. What we define as ‘African schools’ are those that were run by the Department of Education in the apartheid era. ‘Coloured schools’ were run by the House of Delegates. ‘Indian schools’ were run by the House of Representatives. ‘White schools’ are government schools reserved for whites (often referred to as ex‐Model C schools); we have also included the sole private school visited in this category.
11. One of these schools, although not defined by the Ministry as a remote rural school, exhibited many of the features of a remote area: lack of electricity, lack of tarred roads and lack of accommodation for teachers. The interview with the head teacher in this school underscored some of the problems facing schools that are located in rural Botswana. He recounted an experience when two teachers had been allocated to work at his school. They reported for work and did not return. He was later told that they had gone back to the Ministry of Education and said they wanted to be transferred because the school was too remote.
12. Under apartheid this school had been an Afrikaans school where that language was used as the medium of instruction. More recently, only 35% of the student body was white (45% African, the rest Coloured or Indian) and only seven students had Afrikaans as their mother tongue.
13. This was a primary school that previously had been for Coloured students but now such students accounted for only around a quarter of the total.
14. The sole exception to this was one departure from a private school, which caused difficulties because it occurred during the academic year.
15. This school was unusual in that it had successfully integrated its student body to broadly reflect the racial composition of South Africa as a whole (84% of students were African, 8% white, the rest evenly divided between Coloured and Indian). Counterparts at the School of Education at the University of KwaZulu‐Natal described the school as being officially regarded as a ‘model’ school for that reason.
16. The falling enrolments were attributed to the establishment of a new school in the heart of the existing school’s catchment area.
17. Interestingly, the one school not to complain about administrative delays was the most remote school visited.
18. For example, in 2003, the school had short‐listed five applicants for an agricultural science post. Only one applicant came to interview and he found work in another school.
19. One head teacher was unable to answer the question because he was a newly appointed head teacher.
20. No schools had dropped subjects from the curriculum or limited enrolment. However, the head teachers would not have had this authority within Botswana. These are decisions made by the centre.