Temporary teachers reject govt offer

Newly qualified teachers under initial primary teachers’ (IPTE) cohort 13 and 14 have rejected a Ministry of Education offer to hire them permanently in phases.

This follows a meeting representatives of the IPTE teachers had with Ministry of Education officials at Capital Hill on September 21 2023.

In an interview yesterday, the teachers’ task force chairperson Wonderful Gama said the ministry committed to recruit all cohort 13 teachers while cohort 14 teachers will be recruited in the next phase when funds are available.

He said: “Again, the ministry said the cohorts will be recruited one after the other, not as it was recently where cohorts 13, 14 and 15 appeared on the recruitment adverts.”

According to the resolutions of the meeting which we have seen, the ministry also suggested that while they wait for full employment, IPTE 14 teachers should apply for a government internship programme.

However, Gama said his colleagues did not agree with the suggestions.

He said: “They were not satisfied with the resolutions as the ministry officials said they would fully recruit IPTE 13 only. The rest of cohort 14 would be considered on internship.

“However, we do not have hope that all the 5 400 teachers will be employed looking at the process the ministry suggested.”

Gama has since said the group will petition the ministry again to raise the new concerns and if that fails, they will directly petition President Lazarus Chakwera to intervene on the matter.

Ministry of Education Principal Secretary Chikondano Mussa said the government set aside K8 billion in the 2023/24 National Budget for recruitment of 3 000 primary school teachers and 3 000 secondary school teachers.

She said: “Currently government is struggling with funding issues which limit recruitment of teachers.”

However, Edukans executive director Limbani Nsapato told The Nation edition of July 28 2023 that shortage of teachers is affecting teacher-learner ratio which is at 1:67 and in other schools 1:150 against the ideal 1:60.

“Government must increase the wage cap [which runs until 2025] to create room for recruitment of more teachers to reduce the teacher-learner ratio,” he said.

According to Ministry of Education figures, the primary school teacher deficit was 62 000 while 32 000 trained teachers remained unemployed.