THE government has embarked on relocation of 7,000 excess arts subject teachers in public secondary schools to primary schools to bridge the shortage at the foundation level of training.
This was revealed here recently by Senior Education Officer from the President’s Office, Regional Administration and Local Governments, Mr Ndabazi Stephano, saying the transfer does not mean to demote teachers.
People should now start to change mindset that graduate teachers should only teach at secondary schools…the government encourages even teachers from primary education levels to acquire degree,” said the officer at the opening of teachers’ training workshop.
Mr Stephano said public secondary schools were still facing shortage of science teachers, pointing out that the government was working on the problem to improve performance of science subjects at secondary education level.
Last July, the government said public secondary schools had excess of over 7,000 arts teachers and that it was working on the shortage of science teachers at the secondary education level to improve performance of science subjects.
The then Minister of State in the President’s Office, Regional Administration and Local Governments, Mr George Simbachawene, said public secondary schools were still facing shortage of 667 Science and Mathematics teachers.
The government succeeded to recruit only 3,462 teachers out of the advertised 4,129 job slots,” he told a press conference. The minister explained that majority of the applicants could not be hired due to failure to meet the prescribed minimum requirements.
Mr Simbachawene said despite the re-advertisement, only 381 teachers were hired, adding to the first batch of 3,081 teachers recruited in the first advertisement. He said academic certificates of all applicants for the applied posts that the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology advertised were scrutinised to establish forgeries.
Mr Simbachawene said in the re-advertised posts, the government considered applicants who graduated before 2015 to get the balance of 1,048 teachers, saying after verification of their academic certificates, only 381 candidates sailed through.
Source: Daily News
