A South African recruitment drive for teachers, combined with an exodus of education professionals escaping Zimbabwe's seven-year recession, is creating staff shortages so severe that some schools are closing. At least four schools have closed and several more are facing the same situation. The students are being transferred at a time when they are preparing to write their year-end examinations, placing even greater pressure on the recipient schools.Teacher's salaries have not kept pace with Zimbabwe's official inflation rate of more than 6,000 percent, while neighbouring South Africa has embarked on a recruitment drive for teachers in the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC) to bolster their own teacher numbers.
Firoz Patel, director-general for planning and monitoring in South Africa's education department, has reportedly said they were seeking to recruit at least 4,000 mathematics and science teachers from the region by April 2008. The department had already recruited 1,500 teachers, who were being deployed to posts in remote areas, often shunned by local teachers.
The Progressive Teachers Union of Zimbabwe (PTUZ), the biggest grouping of educators in the country, said this week that 15,200 teachers had migrated to neighbouring states, such as South Africa, Botswana, Namibia and Swaziland, since the beginning of 2007. Raymond Majongwe, secretary-general of PTUZ, confirmed that the mass exodus of teachers was forcing schools to close, while many institutions were operating with a skeleton teaching staff.