J1184N Teacher Internship & Development Bursaries Project

The Situation

According to the World Bank, 30 March 2023, South Africa has taken considerable strides to improve the well-being of its citizens since its transition to democracy in the mid-1990s, but progress has stagnated in the last decade. The percentage of the population living below the upper-middle-income country poverty line reached approximately 60% in 2020. Structural challenges and weak growth have undermined progress towards reducing poverty, heightened by the COVID-19 pandemic. Progress in household welfare is severely constrained by rising unemployment reaching 35.3% in the fourth quarter of 2021. The unemployment rate is highest among youths aged between 15 and 24, at around 66.5%.

South Africa has one of the highest and most persistent inequality rates in the world, with a consumption expenditure Gini coefficient of 0.67 in 2018. High inequality is perpetuated by slow economic growth, which is not pro-poor and does not generate sufficient jobs. Inequality in wealth is even higher, and intergenerational economic mobility is low, meaning inequalities are passed down from generation to generation with only marginal change over time.

One of the ways in which we can address the reduction and relief of poverty and ensure the improvement of the economic outcomes of the country, is to implement relevant interventions and projects towards improving the education outcomes of poor communities across South Africa. This is one of the most critical development needs of the country. Many schools serving low-income communities have, despite several interventions from a variety of origins, failed to improve the quality of education they provide, leading to consistent poor outcomes to date. Learners from poor communities still experience problems with paying fees, a lack of books, deteriorating facilities, and a lack of professionally trained teachers.

Ideally, education resources should be increased and equalised across schools as many poor/disadvantaged communities still suffer from sc