The prospect of earning the equivalent of five years' salary in one year is luring South African teachers to classrooms in the Gulf.

But apart from the possibility of earning between R50,000 and R78,000 a month, teachers are also being driven from SA by the high crime rate, religious intolerance, race-based policies, burgeoning class sizes and workloads and an ineffective curriculum.

They are ending up, in the main, in Abu Dhabi, capital of the United Arab Emirates.

A study of the trend by University of KwaZulu-Natal master's student Tatum Niemack cites financial, religious, social and political reasons for it.

There are no statistics readily available for the number of teachers who have left, but the South African Council of Educators (Sace), which issues teachers with the letters of professional standing needed to teach abroad, expressed "grave concern".

"This has implications for the brain drain and is leaving the country in short supply of the valuable experience and good teachers," said Sace spokesperson Thembinkosi Ndhlovu.

"Teachers, especially experienced ones, leaving the profession is not good for the country as invested knowledge and skills are needed."

Nicole Miller, from SA-recruitment, a Cape Town teacher-placement agency, said close to 80 teachers had been recruited through the agency for Abu Dhabi posts in the past two years alone.

Niemack, herself a migrant teacher who has been teaching in Abu Dhabi since 2014, said: "A higher salary was a significant pull factor to Abu Dhabi as it has the potential to economically empower teachers to purchase property, pay for their children's tertiary education, build up their pensions, save and enjoy a better quality of life."