The Minister of Higher Education and Training has published the Policy on the Minimum Requirements for Teacher Education Qualifications for public comment (Government Gazette number 33788, 22 November 2010).

The Policy has been developed in consultation with affected stakeholders and it describes a set of minimum standards for different types of teacher qualifications. The standards are designed to ensure that the higher education system produces the kinds of teachers that the country needs. It provides guidelines for designing learning programmes for teachers, and describes the basic competencies required of newly qualified beginner teachers. The programmes envisaged by the policy ought to qualify and enable teachers (from Grade R to Grade 12) to have a strong subject content knowledge and be able to teach and communicate in more than one official language, including an indigenous African language.

The draft policy iterates the seven “Collective roles of Teachers in Schools” as follows:

• Specialist in a phase, subject discipline or practice
• Learning mediator
• Interpreter and designer of learning programmes and materials
• Leader, administrator and manager
• Scholar, researcher and lifelong learner
• Assessor
• Community, citizenship and pastoral role.

The Policy stipulates the following competencies and knowledge areas in the Foundation phase and specifies the qualifications and minimum admission requirements to realise the stated competencies:

• Grade R teachers are expected to be able to prepare learners for formal schooling. • Grades 1-3 teachers are expected to teach all three subjects – literacy, numeracy and life skills.
• All foundation phase teachers (1) need extensive and specialised knowledge of early childhood learning to teach reading, writing and numeracy and to develop key initial concepts and skills to lay a foundation for learning in later phases; (2) must be skilled in early identification of barriers to learning and be skilled in addressing these through curriculum differentiation for different learning levels within a grade; (3) must specialise in First Language teaching in one of the official languages together with First Additional English Language Teaching; (4) must be competent to work with Grade R learners.

The focus of Grade R is learning through play, developing physical coordination, and developing spoken language competence and fundamental ideas that will form the basis for later development of number sense and literacy.

A copy of the proposed policy may be viewed by clicking here.

Written comments on the draft Policy must be submitted by the 22nd of December 2010. They must be addressed to: The Director-General, Office of the Ministry of Higher Education and Training, Private Bag X174, Pretoria, 0001, 123 Schoeman Street. Marked for the attention of Dr D Parker, Chief Director: Teacher Education and Development. Fax number: 012 323 3322. Dr Parker’s e-mail address is: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it . The contact telephone number is 012 312 6214.