Prison officials have recommended that Oscar Pistorius, the South African double-amputee Olympic athlete convicted of killing his girlfriend, be released from prison on 21 August for good behaviour after serving only 10 months and be moved to house arrest, the head of correctional services said.

The news emerged as the country’s supreme court of appeal announced the prosecution’s appeal against Pistorius’s acquittal on a murder charge for killing Reeva Steenkamp would be heard in November.

Pistorius was found guilty of culpable homicide for shooting Steenkamp multiple times through a closed toilet door in his home in February 2013. He was sentenced to five years in prison. Under South African law, he is eligible to be released under conditions after serving one-sixth of his sentence, which is 10 months in this case.

The country’s acting national commissioner of correctional services, Zach Modise, said: that a prison committee recommended last week that Pistorius be released from the prison in Pretoria on 21 August, exactly 10 months after he was sentenced and meaning he will have served the minimum amount of jail time his sentence required.

Modise said the committee made the recommendation on the basis of Pistorius’s good behaviour in the Kgosi Mampuru II prison in the capital, Pretoria, where he has been incarcerated since 21 October.

“He’s behaving himself very well,” Modise said. “He hasn’t given us any problems.”

The correctional services spokesman Manelisi Wolela said the exact conditions of Pistorius’s house arrest wouldn’t be made public. The prison’s parole board had not yet made the final decision to release Pistorius and the world-famous runner must “keep behaving well” to be released, Modise said.

If released, Pistorius would be under strict probation conditions and would be monitored, Modise added. He said authorities would consider allowing him to begin training again.

However, Pistorius will again face the possibility of a minimum of 15 years in prison if a panel of judges at the supreme court of appeal overturns the original decision in his murder trial and convicts him of murder.

The court has not yet set an exact date for the start of the appeal, the court registrar Paul Myburgh said, but it will be this November.

Last year, prosecutors launched an appeal against the decision by the trial judge, Thokozile Masipa, to find Pistorius guilty of the lesser charge, saying he should have been convicted of murder for shooting four times through the toilet cubicle door, killing Steenkamp. In December, Masipa granted prosecutors permission to appeal against her finding.

Myburgh said the chief prosecutor Gerrie Nel and the defence lawyer Barry Roux had already met the president of the court.

Some of the details of the appeal hearing have been ironed out: prosecutors must submit their court papers outlining their argument by 17 August. Pistorius’s defence team must submit their response by 17 September, Myburgh said.