The Jakes Gerwel Fellowship wants you to be the best version of yourself that you can be. The start of your journey begins with thinking through what subjects you are most passionate about and want to hone your future, expert teaching abilities around. Your path to impact begins with a full undergraduate scholarship at UP or UCT studying a BA, BCom or BSc that best aligns to your teaching subjects.

Following your undergraduate degree, we will then support you to pursue a second qualification called a PGCE (Post Graduate Certificate in Education).
This qualifies you as a professional teacher!

We know that your first job as a teacher is often a tough one. The Jakes Gerwel Fellowship will help you as you write your CV, apply for posts, attend interviews and secure your first teaching job. This will get you off to a flying start to hone your professional skills and deepen personal learning. Now it is over to you: where will you start making your biggest difference?

Within 6 to 8 years, Jakes Gerwel Fellows can expect to have mastered their teaching skills and joined impactful Professional Learning Communities that support their expert teaching abilities. This is not a straight line journey though. We need more than expert teachers to impact on schools across South Africa. Now that you understand what excellence in a classroom looks like, it is time to amplify that through your Professional Learning Communities.

Some Jakes Gerwel Fellows will choose to pursue leadership roles in schools while others will choose to lead change in unions, at policy levels, as researchers or within education departments. Then there are the education entrepreneurs who are driving change through scalable, low cost schools and riding the tech wave to bring disruptive technologies into the classroom. Hopefully a future Minister of Education, South Africa’s first winner of the Global Teacher Prize and the Founder of a revolutionary learning platform are amongst the many, many Jakes Gerwel Fellows influencing learners across South Africa.