South Africa’s teacher retention crisis is directly linked to the collapse of child welfare services, according to a senior lecturer at the North-West University who says the country is facing one interconnected crisis rather than separate problems.

Dr Marelize Vergottini, a social work lecturer at North West University, said teachers are being crushed under the weight of expanding responsibilities while the support systems they rely on are being weakened or defunded.

“We are losing teachers, the social workers who support them and the non-governmental organisations to which they refer vulnerable children. These are not three separate crises. They are one crisis, and it is unfolding now,” Vergottini said.

Recent figures show that almost half of South Africa’s public school educators are already aged 50 or older, while more than 17 000 teaching posts were vacant in January 2026.

A survey involving 1 513 teachers across all nine provinces found that 49% wanted to leave the profession within the next decade. This figure increased to 57% among teachers working in no-fee schools.

Only 2% said they no longer enjoyed working with children. The real reasons were overwork, inadequate remuneration and an overwhelming administrative burden. Seventy per cent identified administration as their greatest source of stress, while a third said the profession was damaging their mental health.

Teachers overwhelmed by expanding roles

Teachers regularly deal with disclosures of abuse, parental alcoholism, gangsterism, drug use and pregnancy, sometimes even in primary schools. They must then attempt to secure assistance from a social worker, often unsuccessfully.

“Teachers can carry a great deal when there is somewhere to refer a vulnerable child. What ultimately breaks them is being expected to serve as both the first responder and the last resort,” Vergottini said.

The entire public education sector employs only 761 social services professionals, including 232 educational psychologists, to serve approximately 12,8 million learners. That equates to roughly one psychosocial professional for every 17 000 children.

NGO sector collapsing under funding delays

For decades, much of the gap has been filled by non-governmental organisations. Child Welfare branches, the South African National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence (SANCA), the National Institute for Crime Prevention and the Reintegration of Offenders, shelters and trauma centres provide services to which teachers turn when children need specialised assistance.

These are precisely the services now collapsing.

In Gauteng, the Gauteng Care Crisis Committee, representing more than 500 organisations, reported that three months into the 2026/27 financial year, many NGOs still had neither signed contracts nor received payments. It marked the sector’s fourth protest in four years.

Lifeline Vaal, which has served the Vaal Triangle for 44 years, was unable to pay its staff from April. On 31 July 2026, NG Welfare Vanderbijlpark, a registered child-protection organisation, permanently ceased operations and transferred its active cases to the Department of Social Development.

KwaZulu-Natal reduced NGO funding from R755 million to R695 million in a single year, while many child subsidies have remained unchanged since 2019. In the Western Cape, the Child Protection Alliance, representing more than 70% of the province’s NGO child-protection workers, has warned that five years of frozen subsidies amount to a real-terms reduction of between 20% and 25%.

Vulnerable children falling through the cracks

By the end of 2025, children younger than 13 accounted for 10% of clients at SANCA’s Central Rand centre, up from 2%, while 44% of all clients were younger than 18.

When treatment is unavailable, schools are left with limited options including suspension and exclusion. These responses can push already vulnerable children further away from the education system.

Vergottini said every welfare office that closes transfers more responsibility to teachers, who are least equipped and resourced to carry it.

Eighty-one per cent of South Africa’s Grade 4 learners cannot read for meaning, while six in every 10 children experience trauma during childhood.

Urgent action needed

Vergottini called for NGOs to be paid fully and on time, as the law already requires. The 2010 Nawongo judgment clarified the state’s funding obligations and established deadlines for concluding contracts and making payments, yet these deadlines are now routinely missed.

She said the referral network must be recognised and funded as essential social infrastructure, not treated as charity.

South Africa must also work towards placing a school social worker in every school and finalise regulations governing school social work. Draft regulations recognising school social work were released in 2020 but remain unfinalised six years later.

“The doors are closing one by one. We can still keep them open, but only if we stop pretending that these are separate emergencies,” Vergottini said.

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