Replace teachers on leave 

Peter Matika, Online Desk

LEGISLATORS have called on the Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education to reinstate the employment of temporary teachers for teachers that go on leave to ensure the flow of education remains uncompromised.

The call was made on 29 March in the Senate by Senator Dorothy Mabika.

She said the law enacted by the Public Service Commission needed urgent review.

The Government stopped engaging temporary teachers years ago.

“…I want to direct my question to the Minister of Primary and Secondary Education regarding the policy which concerns teachers on leave. We are informed that those that go on leave are not replaced. They go and come back without a replacement. You find at times children will be 45 in a class. When a teacher is not replaced, what it means is that these children will be taken up by another teacher who has responsibility for other children. You find a teacher teaching 120 children. This compromises their education,” said Senator Mabika.

She said the law needed to be reviewed, as the country had a lot of graduate teachers and the possibility of maintaining the education scale was plausible.

“My question is, can that law not be reviewed to allow teachers on leave to be replaced because we have a lot of graduates? Is it not possible for graduate teachers to take over so that we have manageable classes? The law says that for infants, the teacher ratio should be 1:20, and for juniors, it is 1:40. So this is not what is happening in schools.

“In infants, you will find that there will be 60 children to one teacher. So how can such a policy be enforced so that our children benefit? If it means adding the number of teachers at schools, then this should be done so that the children to teacher ratio is fair,” said Mabika.

In response, Deputy Minister of Primary and Secondary Education, Edgar Moyo confirmed the situation.

“Yes, teachers going on leave were not being replaced. That is true, these are regulations from the Public Service Commission in terms of trying to manage staff costs. When a teacher goes on leave and they are replaced, there will be a double payment because whether they are on leave, they are paid full salary and the teacher coming in will also come on full salary. I think because of budgetary constraints, that is the reason why we then have that kind of regulation,” said Deputy Minister Moyo.

He acknowledged that the situation was affecting the quality of education.

“Yes, granted, it creates a problem in terms of quality teaching and quality learning by our children, but our schools normally have ways of addressing this. The ways of addressing that differ from school to school. The PSC regulations are guided largely by Treasury guidelines because Treasury gives us – normally like we always heard that this year we are employing new teachers, maybe up to 5 000, and that is guided by the roll-out of the budget itself because they cannot employ beyond what the budget can carry. Yes, it is giving us problems but at the moment that is the situation,” said the deputy minister.

He added that the country was faced with an acute shortage of teachers.

“The same goes for the teacher-pupil ratio of 1:20 for infants and 1:40 for other classes. We have a big shortage of teachers in the country. I think at the moment we have a shortage of between 12 000 and 15 000 in the system. We would like to have those teachers and the teachers are available but are not employed because we need to move with the budget so that we employ people that can be paid. So, we are limited in terms of employment by the budgetary provisions,” said Deputy Minister Moyo.