Minister Siviwe Gwarube: Launch of TALIS 2024 South Africa Report

Programme Director,
Honourable Ministers and heads of delegations from G20 countries and guest countries,
Distinguished representatives from partner organisations,
Deputy Ministers and MECs,
Representatives from teacher unions and professional bodies,
School principals and educators,
Our partners in research and policy,
Ladies and gentlemen,

Good morning.

Thank you for joining us today as we launch the Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS) 2024 South Africa Report. This report helps us to hold up a mirror to ourselves as the basic education sector, as a country, and as a community of people who believe that education is our greatest pathway to a fair and prosperous South Africa.

We stand here with a sense of pride. South Africa is the only African nation to have participated twice in TALIS, in 2018 and again in 2024. This places our country in a position of continental leadership in terms of evidence-led policy making.

We willingly open our classrooms, our school management systems and our professional practices to international scrutiny. By doing so, we signal confidence not only in our progress but, more importantly, in our willingness to confront our challenges with honesty and resolve.

The Seventh Administration has set itself the task of rebuilding trust in the state, in public institutions, and in education as a public good. Central to this effort is strengthening the teaching profession, restoring dignity to the classroom, and rebuilding the foundation of learning in every South African school.

TALIS gives voice to those who live the reality of education every day: teachers and principals. It helps us shape responsive policy and align it with the lived experience of educators. In this way, TALIS aligns with our strategic focus on:

• Strengthening the foundations of learning;
• Professionalising and empowering the teaching workforce; and
• Building a resilient, future-ready system in the era of digital transformation.

The report reveals that South Africa has one of the youngest teaching cohorts globally. Our average teacher age has decreased from 43 in 2018 to 41 in 2024. In the same period the OECD average age of teachers increased to 45 years.

This means that our efforts to attract young people into the profession are bearing fruit.

Over 23% of our teachers are under the age of 30. This demographic shift is significant: it means our classrooms are increasingly led by a new generation of digitally adaptable, eager, hopeful teachers, who are invested in the future.

I have seen the impact of this personally when I visited Makhumbuza High School in KZN, where a teacher is using dance and song to teach life sciences in an engaging and relatable manner.

Even more encouraging, 62% of teachers report that teaching was their first-choice career. This is up from 49% in 2018. This is a sign that our work to reposition teaching as a profession of purpose, impact, and dignity is slowly gaining ground.

We must continue to make the teaching profession fashionable, attractive, safe and fulfilling for those who are called to this noble profession.

At the same time, we must confront the leadership gender gap: while 62% of teachers are women, only 32% of principals are female. This is an area where equity must translate into leadership opportunity.

On the positive side, we are above the OECD average for female school principals (which stands at 15%). While we are not where we want to be, we must appreciate that we are doing much better than other OECD countries.

93% of newly qualified teachers rated their initial training as high quality. This is well above the OECD average. Yet young teachers report gaps in areas that matter deeply to our system. These include teaching in multilingual classrooms, differentiated instruction and using digital tools effectively.

That is why the work we are doing with Mother Tongue-based Bilingual Education is so important. We must strengthen the training we give to teachers to be able to teach in a multi-cultural and multi-lingual context, such as that of South Africa. MTbBE has the full support and confidence of the 7th Administration. It is a strategic lever that can be a catalyst to our strengthening of the Foundations of Learning.

TALIS lays bare the daily complexity of our classrooms:

• In 65% of schools, more than 10% of learners speak a language different from the language of instruction.
• More than half of teachers report that learners struggle with the language of learning and teaching.
• 56% of learners come from socioeconomically disadvantaged homes.
• Around one-quarter of teachers work in schools with significant special needs populations.

These realities underscore why the Seventh Administration is fully committed to strengthening the foundations of learning, particularly reading with understanding, enabling multilingual pedagogy, and supporting inclusive education.

TALIS confirms what our curriculum reforms and literacy accelerator programmes already recognise: strong foundations are not optional – they are the oxygen of learning.

TALIS shows us that South African teachers value professional development more than most of their global peers, with over 73% of respondents saying it meaningfully impacts their practice. Teachers are deeply committed to growth. But we must ensure continuing professional teacher development programmes are responsive to emerging needs, such as artificial intelligence integration, environmental education and inclusive education.

One of the most sobering findings in the report relates to teacher mindset. South Africa emerges as a statistical outlier in that some teachers hold the belief that intelligence is fixed and cannot be changed. This deeply concerns us because it touches the core of pedagogy. If teachers believe a learner has a fixed intellectual ceiling, then the possibility of transformation is diminished.

We want a system built on hope, possibility and resilience. We want teachers who believe in growth, not limits. This will be a critical area for reflection, teacher empowerment and pedagogical recalibration.

Nearly half of our teachers already use AI tools for lesson planning, learner support and professional tasks – higher than the OECD average. This shows appetite and readiness for new technologies, but does require us to think about how we can harness this for greater improvement in learning outcomes. Among teachers who do not use AI, 57% say they lack the necessary skills, and 75% cite inadequate infrastructure.

This duality is important: it signals readiness among young teachers and structural barriers that we must address, if we are to fully harness digital learning.

Perhaps one of the most important findings is that 59% of teachers and 58% of principals experience high levels of work-related stress. South African teachers carry one of the highest teaching loads globally, an average of 26.6 hours per week compared to the OECD average of 21.2. Excessive marking, administrative burdens, and learner discipline issues are key stress factors.

A teacher who is running on empty cannot ignite learning. A system that values quality must protect the well-being of those who carry it.

I am intervening in this regard. I gave the newly operationalised National Education and Training Council the mandate to investigate how we can lessen the administrative burden on teachers. They will advise of strategies, tools and systems that will ensure that teachers are not overburdened by administrative tasks and that we free them to spend more time on their core responsibility, which is teaching.

TALIS points to stress caused by intimidation and verbal abuse from learners, which affects a proportion of our teachers. Again this reinforces one of my key priorities for the 7th administration, making every school in South Africa a place of safety and dignity for both the learner and their teacher.

Learning cannot happen in fear; teaching cannot flourish in insecurity.

We signed a Safer Schools Protocol with the South African Police Service earlier this year and we have begun rolling out the protocol, targeting first the schools in crime hotspot areas, such as Inanda Township in KZN, Emfuleni and Manneburg in the Western Cape, uMtata and Nelson Mandela Bay in the Eastern Cape.

The incidents of violence in our schools have been on a downward trend but these TALIS results show us that we must accelerate our work to make schools safer.

Ladies and gentlemen,

The report shows strong teacher agency and high levels of participation in professional learning communities. South African teachers are leaders within their schools. However, principals often prioritise administrative discipline over instructional leadership. This is an opportunity to shift school leadership toward learning-focused cultures, especially within our foundational phase priorities.

We are not here simply to admire or critique the data. We are here to translate TALIS into action steps to:

• Strengthen teacher support and lighten administrative burdens;
• Ground learning in literacy, numeracy, and strong pedagogies;
• Expand continuous professional teacher development aligned with digital and inclusive teaching needs;
• Cultivate a growth mindset in every classroom;
• Foster safety, belonging, and well-being;
• Professionalise teaching leadership pathways, especially for women; and
• Use evidence as a compass for reform-driven governance.

TALIS reminds us that teaching is not simply the delivery of content – it is the forging of futures. Our teachers are bridge builders between disadvantage and opportunity, between self-doubt and confidence, between where a child is and where they have the potential to go.

As government, we commit to strengthening those who build these bridges every day.

To all our teachers: your work is not in vain. Your voices, captured in this report, are now part of our agenda of transformation.

To our principals: your leadership is a catalyst for change.

To our partners and researchers: thank you for holding us accountable through evidence.

To all South Africans: education is not a spectator sport – it is a national imperative that must be available to all.

Let us move forward with the courage to change, the humility to learn, and the urgency to act.

I thank you.

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