Official statement of Christian Changemakers on the teachers maths and science directive

The Christian Changemakers is seriously concerned about the destructive decisions being made by the Minister of Education especially on the directive to have all teachers without maths and science being forced to leave the system.

Our concerns are as follows:
1. Honestly what does a teacher teaching English, History, IsiNdebele or Shona at secondary level need maths and science for?

2. Zimbabwe is said to have a literacy rate of 92% and its those teachers without maths and science who have made Zimbabwe education the best, what has gone wrong now?

3. We are of the strong opinion the Minister is trying to absorb into employment system those people who finished at universities and dont have jobs because of the failed economic policies of the government. Because most of these are youths, the Minister is afraid they are a recipe for a Tunisia and an Egypt kind of revolution in Zimbabwe thats why he decides to sacrifice teachers for these youths. This is further made real by the decision by the Ministry to prioritise degreed people even for temporary teaching vacancies;

4. We also believe this is part of the 1979 Grand Plan to annihilate all non shona speaking groups as we have seen the deployment of people with maths and science to go and just teach in ndebele speaking areas even at primary schools though they arent competent of the local languages.

5. We are also concerned the minister seems to be obsessed with Maths and Science at the expense of competency and expirience.                 

RECOMENDATIONS                   

1. The Minister should only direct the directive to primary school teachers as they are not specialising;       

2. There is no subject more important than the other, we thus call on the Minister to include Geography, History into his directive;       

3. English is a foreign langauge to us and we have people teaching without local languages, we thus call on the minister to abide by constitutional provisions and say anyone without a local language should be fired from that locality by end of 2014;                           

5. The Minister should mantain standards by calling on all those teaching without a teaching qualification to leave the profession by end of 2014, and

4. The Minister should advise the government of better means of providing employement for university graduates that compromise the teaching profession.

(Christian Changemakers is a christian lobby group based in Bulawayo).