Solidarity Helping Hand today unveiled a bursary fund totalling R250 000 in aid of mathematics teaching.
 
This comes after recent media reports that 96% of Grade 9’s in the country achieved 50% or less in a national mathematics benchmarking test.
 
“The results of this national assessment are very worrying and once again show the crisis that exists in South Africa’s maths education,” says Dr Danie Brink, Executive Director of Helping Hand. “This crisis can on the one hand be attributed to an acute shortage of good maths teachers and, on the other hand, to a severe lack of subject knowledge among maths teachers.”
 
According to Brink, the shortage of maths teachers currently outweighs the supply of maths teachers produced by tertiary institutions. According to an analysis by the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC), between 18 000 and 22 000 teachers leave the teaching professional annually. It is therefore worrying that South Africa’s higher education institutions produce only between 6 000 and 10 000 new teachers every year.

Read the article online