PROTECTION FROM PREDATORS : Two-thirds of public school staff remain unvetted for child abuse as court deadline looms

With less than eight months to go until a strict court-mandated deadline, the Department of Basic Education is racing to close a staggering 66% vetting gap, leaving more than 300,000 public school staff completely unchecked for child abuse records.

About 309,000 teachers at public schools across the country have not been checked for their suitability to work with children, and schools have only seven months to do so, in accordance with a court agreement decided on 7 August.

The Department of Basic Education (DBE) and provincial education departments entered into a court-backed settlement agreement requiring them to vet all public school employees against Part B of the National Child Protection Register by 31 March 2027.

This follows a legal challenge brought by public interest law centre SECTION27 on behalf of the Teddy Bear Foundation, seeking to compel education and social development authorities to comply with their constitutional and statutory duties to protect children from sexual predators in schools.

The court challenge was sparked by the 2015 rape of a 12-year-old girl by a school caretaker. The perpetrator continued working at the school for seven years before being dismissed, and was only placed on the National Child Protection Register (NCPR) in 2023 after the organisations approached authorities and repeatedly followed up on the matter.

The settlement agreement was made by order of the Gauteng High Court in Pretoria, where the organisations brought an application against 17 respondents, including the ministers of Basic Education, Social Development and Justice and Constitutional Development.

All nine provincial education MECs, the national police commissioner, the South African Council of Educators (SACE), and the Educators Labour Relations Council were also cited. Under the settlement, education authorities committed to vetting all staff and reporting any employees found guilty of misconduct rendering them unsuitable to work with children to the Department of Social Development (DSD) for inclusion on the register.

With less than eight months remaining before the 31 March 2027 deadline, official figures reveal a staggering administrative bottleneck across the basic education sector. According to data drawn from the National DSD NCPR dashboard, the verified national target population for these suitability checks stands at 464,669 employees. Yet, as of 5 August 2026, only 155,169 completed verifications have been recorded. This leaves more than 309,000 basic education employees, approximately 66.6% of the workforce, without a recorded NCPR verification.

A closer look at the provincial data reveals severe disparities in compliance. KwaZulu-Natal is facing the steepest uphill battle; out of a massive target of 99,703 employees, the province has completed only 3,939 verifications. The situation is similarly dire in Eastern Cape, which has cleared just 4,290 of its 59,539 staff members. Mpumalanga has completed 12,394 of its 37,151 required verifications, Limpopo has verified 7,146 out of 55,602 employees and North West has completed a mere 2,480 checks out of its 28,584 target.