Zimbabwe government in u-turn on temporary teachers

GOVERNMENT has made a u-turn on suspending the engagement of temporary teachers, amid growing concerns that the suspension could have crippled the already deteriorating education sector, a Cabinet minister has said.

Last month the Ministry of Education, Sport, Arts and Culture made an undertaking to stop the engagement of temporary teachers, citing the need to replace them with qualified teachers.

The ministry had also announced that qualified teachers intending to go on leave would not be in a position to do so.
 
In an interview on the sidelines of the Bulawayo Province Schools Merit Awards, Education, Sport, Arts and Culture Minister, Senator David Coltart, said temporary teachers were presently integral to the education sector and suspending them was going to be an ill- timed decision.

"What I should emphasise is that at the present moment we cannot expect to meet the requirements of the teaching sector. We are far from a scenario were 100 percent of our teachers are qualified. Until we have such a scenario, it is inevitable that we have these temporary teachers," said Senator Coltart.

The minister said while it was their long-term goal to have qualified teachers at all schools that could not just happen overnight.

"We can't simply go and get rid of temporary teachers it is a gradual process that can never happen overnight. When you go to places like Binga, you will find that most of the schools are being manned by temporary teachers. So it wouldn't be sincere on our part to just try and get rid of them because we will be indirectly negating our education sector.

"As it stands we are far from meeting the requirements of teachers so with that background we can't honestly think of getting rid of these temporary teachers," he said.

Meanwhile, the minister has said they will not revise downwards the passing standards of the Zimbabwe Schools Examination Council all in a bid to improve the country's overall pass rate.

Last year the country recorded a pass rate of 25 percent with Bulawayo Province recording 19,8 percent.

Senator Coltart said they were not going to take the route taken by most countries in the region that of lowering standards as that was more of cheating themselves.

"We know that there are some countries in the region that reduced their standards so as to improve the pass rate, even Cambridge did the same, but as a country we are never going to take that route, instead we will strive to improve the quality of teaching and this inclusive of teacher remuneration," said the minister.

He said while morale was low within the teaching fraternity as Government they were working round the clock in ensuring that teachers stayed in the classrooms and not disadvantage students by engaging in industrial action.

Senator Coltart said they were also working at launching the second phase of the Education Transition Fund, which would see the Government distributing eight million textbooks to secondary and primary schools countrywide.

"In the long run we aim to achieve a one is to one textbook to pupil ratio and it is a well known fact that when students have their own textbooks they perform far much better, this thereby naturally meaning our pass rate will surely improve.

"It is not like we. are just sitting back and hoping that things will go back to normal just like that. We are doing everything possible to maintain our high education standards," said Minister Coltart.