Facts in Q&A format

The World Bank’s Human Capital Index measures “the amount of human capital that a child born today can expect to attain by age 18”. It expresses this as a value between zero and one. An economy in which the average worker achieves both full health and full education potential will score a valu...

In 2021, there were 22,740 ordinary public schools and 2,154 independent schools in South Africa, according to data from the department of basic education. The total was 24,894 – a decrease from 25,199 in 2020. (Note: These numbers exclude early childhood development centres and special s...

In 2021 there were 13, 409,249 learners in ordinary public and independent schools in South Africa. (Note: This number excludes early childhood development centres and special schools.) ...

In 2021 there were 447,123 educators in South African schools. (Note: These numbers exclude early childhood development centres and special schools.) ...

In 2020, the South African adult illiteracy rate was 90%, indicating an improvement of 2.1 percentage points from 2019. ...

In 2018, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (Unesco) ranked South Africa 99th out of 159 countries based on its adult literacy rate. This rate is defined as the “percentage of the population ages 15 and older that can, with understanding, both read and write a sho...

No. An article on the website Ihlaya News reports that the University of Venda is planning to introduce a course on witchcraft that will include classes on “lightning” and “thunder”. The article was flagged as possibly false by Facebook’s fact-checking system. But it’s not false - o...