‘Untrained teachers compromising education system’

The Sunday Mail

By Itai Mazire

20 January 2013

The recruitment of unqualified school teachers at most State-run learning institutions has begun taking its toll on the education system in Zimbabwe amid revelations that the affected schools are recording poor pass rates. The Government is, however, plan­ning to train the teachers as part of measures to address the matter.

Education, Sport, Arts and Culture Minister Senator David Coltart told The Sunday Mail last week that author­ities turned to unqualified staff, among them Ordinary and Advanced Level graduates, after qualified tutors migrated en masse at the height of the 2008 economic downturn.

He said Zimbabwe required 136 000 teachers, but only has 106 000. The situ­ation, he said, had negatively affected pupils. “We estimate that we lost over 20 000 teachers between 2007 and 2008. The country, however, regained about 15 000 teachers after the 2009 amnesty,” he said.

“This situation has resulted in authorities being forced to employ and deploy unqualified teachers to fill the gap, meaning there is no improvement to our education.”

Sen Coltart said his ministry was working with a cross-section of stake­holders to address the matter.

“Cabinet is aware of this matter. I have already held discussions with the Minister of Finance (Mr Tendai Biti), highlighting that the education sector needs a boost of both financial and human resources.

“We are in the process of implement­ing a series of measures that include the mass training of the unqualified per­sonnel. We want them to become profes­sional teachers and have already made great strides under this initiative.”

Former Zimbabwe Teachers’ Associ­ation (Zimta) president Mrs Tendai Chikowore said the union would soon approach the parent ministry over the continued deployment of such teachers.

“It is not logical for Government to deploy untrained teachers while we have thousands of qualified personnel in the country,” she said.

“There is need for clarity since the Ministry of Education, Sport, Arts and Culture is not the employer. There is now need for us as Zimta to establish if this is a directive from the Public Ser­vice ministry.Government should waive the recruitment freeze it introduced and let normalcy return to schools rather than having children being taught by untrained staff.”

Between 2007 and 2008, Zimbabwe suffered a serious economic downturn that saw skilled manpower, including teachers, migrating in search of greener pastures. Government later encouraged the tutors to return home after the multi-currency system introduced in 2009 brought relative economic stability.

The numbers that heeded the calls could not, however, fill all the vacancies, a situation that led to the mass recruit­ment of unqualified teaching staff.

A manpower recruitment freeze introduced in the civil service has also made it difficult for trained personnel to occupy the available posts.

Sen Coltart said his ministry would soon compile a database of all teaching staff across the country.

“Since 2006, we have been failing to account for the number of teachers countrywide or even the number of unqualified personnel in our schools.

“We now have a management educa­tion system that can give us all the data and statistics on the employees in the education sector. We will be able to provide all this information in a couple of weeks since it is vital to improving education stan­dards.”