This is a teacher-led network working towards realising the potential of all children in South Africa through a fellowship programme.
It aims to:
Teachers Can Fellowship immersion in December 2022.
Many teachers face several external factors that impact not only their ability to teach effectively but also their wellbeing. As a consequence, they can feel demoralised and unsupported in the profession.
Research1Zuma, K., Simbayi, L.C., Rehle, T., Mbelle, N., Zungu, N.P., Mthembu, J., North, A., Van Zyl, J., Jooste, S., Moyo, S., Wabiri, N., Maduna, V., Mabaso, M., Naidoo, I., Chasela, C., Chikovore, J. & Educator Survey II, Study Team (2016) The health of educators in public schools in South Africa 2016. (Commissioned by the Department of Basic Education, June). Access here: http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11910/10971 by the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) demonstrates that South Africa has a low retention of young teachers, citing a lack of support for new teachers as one of the major contributing factors. In addition, they are frequently tasked with executing an inflexible curriculum for targeted outcomes and there is little freedom for teachers to innovate when it comes to teaching practices, or to challenge national decisions based on their experiences in the classroom. When they feel unsupported and overlooked, it narrows their sense of agency – to the detriment of the entire education system.
For quality education to occur in South Africa, teachers need to appreciate the central role they play in ensuring quality learning. They need to feel empowered to navigate the education system and its structures, and have the professional freedom and responsibility to innovate. This is the only way we will address the systemic challenges that plague our post-apartheid education system.
The majority of South Africans are stuck in an inequality trap with wealth concentrated in the hands of a few. Most are stuck in intergenerational loops of exclusion with few chances to escape. Breaking this cycle requires a fundamental change in life trajectories, starting in the womb.
Think of a Möbius strip – just one twist in the circle allows you to trace a completely different pattern. Instead of being stuck on the inside of a loop, you emerge on the outside. In the same way, escaping the inequality trap requires a fundamental twist to set South Africa on a new path.
The Teachers CAN Fellowship aims to bring together young teachers who are passionate and committed to building an education sector in which every child in South Africa receives a quality education. Quality education can be defined as an experience that enables each learner to succeed in school and provides the basis for them to develop to their highest potential.
The Teachers CAN Fellowship is committed to centering teachers and positioning them as a powerful force for change.
The Fellowship is designed around the following components:
The Teachers CAN Fellowship is designed to enable young teachers to develop a common identity rooted in professionalism, creativity and a desire to disrupt the status quo for the benefit of all learners. The Fellows can expect a challenging and nurturing environment based on the belief that each of them has the potential to transform the education system.
The Fellowship commenced in 2021 with its first cohort and it has been growing ever since.
As of March 2025, Parent Power has been incorporated into Teachers CAN and is no longer operating as a standalone project. The aim of this merge is to embed parental engagement directly into the teacher network.
While Parent Power had strong uptake from schools and communities, we often felt unable to engage and mobilise parents in the spaces they mostly occupy, away from the school environment. Building effective parental engagement requires sustained intervention with a highly diverse group requiring differentiated, targeted approaches. At the same time, a growing contingent of teachers within the Teachers CAN network expressed need for tools to support stronger parent–teacher relationships. They saw this not just as a professional need, but as essential to learner support and better relationships between parents and schools. The two teams spotted an opportunity – build on the successes of the Parent Champion Programme, centring teachers who had identified this critical partnership as key to improving learner outcomes.
The Parent Champions Programme was designed to strengthen partnerships between schools and parents. The programme recognised that when parents and teachers work together as equal partners, children thrive both academically and emotionally. The main goal was to build the capacity of teachers to lead parental engagement in their schools, collaborate with parents and equipping them tools to dialogue as equal partners.
This integration marks a natural shift from programme-based delivery to a network-driven model — one that recognises teachers as key connectors between classrooms, families, and communities
Learn more on the Teachers Can website: https://teacherscan.org.za/
Trying to change life trajectories is ambitious and profound. It requires us to radically influence the lives of individuals and to be part of changing the circumstances in which they live.
