- The Education Department employs almost 97% of the teachers in South Africa. Given the department's restricted budget, the employment of teachers over the next four years is expected to increase by not much more than 6%.
- Given the fact that many of the teacher’s training colleges have been disbanded there are not enough new teachers graduating from South African universities. This together with other factors such as the impact of AIDS will inevitably lead to a high demand for qualified teachers in future.
- Higher growth is expected for certain categories of education for instance in maths, science, accounting and information technology. This is a result of the tremendous backlog of these categories of teachers in traditionally black schools. Furthermore, many of these categories of educators have left education for more lucrative jobs in the private sector and /or have emigrated to other countries.
- The employment of teachers in the government sector accounts for a substantial part of total employment of professionals in South Africa. The new education system for teachers and the slow expected growth in demand for teachers is likely to have a substantial slowing effect on the growth of professional employment over the next five years.
- Low to moderate growth (0%-10%) in demand is forecast for all other education-related occupations such as instructors and lecturers mainly as a result of slow growth in higher educational institutions.
