Children as young as 13 must make subject choices that can shape what they study later and, ultimately, the careers open to them. It’s a big decision for such young learners, who may well change their minds multiple times before finishing school.
For Deaf learners, that decision is substantially more difficult because not every school offers the subject they wish to study, which can cut them off from several career choices.
This has a broader impact because Deaf learners may be cut off from fields desperately short of skills, including artificial intelligence, cyber security and software development.
What the data shows
Statistics South Africa’s 2022 Census shows gains in educational attainment among people with disabilities, yet the figures remain discouraging. In 2022, 23.7% of people with disabilities aged 25 and older had completed secondary education as their highest level of education, compared with 35.3% of those without disabilities.
Tertiary attainment was far closer, at 12.1% and 12.8%, respectively. The Census does not distinguish between types of disability, making it impossible to determine from these figures how many Deaf children finish high school or go on to tertiary education.
Yet, of South Africa’s 24,766 schools serving 13.6 million children as of 2025, only 43 are schools for the Deaf.
Of these, just 17 provide education up to matric, according to the latest government information, which dates back to 2018. Moreover, teachers in schools for the Deaf don’t need additional qualifications over and above those required for educators in general and are not required to be proficient in South African Sign Language (SASL) despite it becoming a medium of education in 2014.
Subjects that shut doors
The Department of Basic Education itself emphasises the importance of the subjects selected by grade nine learners, as this determines the field of study they can follow once they complete school. Without the right combination, youngsters can find themselves locked out of the higher or further education programmes they hoped to enter.
To obtain the National Senior Certificate, learners need seven subjects and to pass six. Four are compulsory, including a Home Language – which can be SASL – a First Additional Language, Mathematics or Mathematical Literacy, and Life Orientation. The remaining three are chosen at the end of Grade 9.
Yet, we have identified only three schools for the Deaf that teach mathematics. While many offer computer applications technology, none teach IT, which covers programming and coding.
Counting the shortfall
Quantifying the scale of the shortfall is exceptionally difficult. A 2024 Statistics South Africa report based on the 2022 Census records 38,724 people with severe to profound hearing loss and a further 1.7 million aged five and older with mild to moderate hearing loss.
The scale of the problem with the data becomes clear when trying to do even rudimentary maths. People aged five to 24 account for about 37% of South Africa’s population aged five and older. Applying that proportion to the 1.77 million people reporting some degree of hearing difficulty produces an estimate of around 656,000 young people.
Given an average of 549 learners per school, South Africa would theoretically need around 1,194 schools to accommodate all learners with hearing difficulties, although schools for the Deaf would likely have smaller classes.
But that number cannot legitimately be translated into demand for schools for the Deaf. We don’t know how many of those 656,000 are Deaf, use SASL as their primary language or require specialised schooling.
Without reliable figures showing how many school-age children are Deaf –use SASL as their primary language – and where they live, there is no defensible way to calculate how many schools for the Deaf South Africa needs – or whether the existing network comes close to meeting demand.
If South Africa cannot accurately quantify the number of Deaf children who require SASL-based education, it becomes impossible to work out whether the current network of schools comes close to meeting demand.
As a result, we are cutting an unknown number of young people out of even finishing school. The question therefore must be asked: how many skilled technologists, scientists, software engineers and cyber security experts are we robbing our country of at a time when these skills are critical?