Jobs for 10 000 teachers

AT least 10 000 new teachers will be employed at State-run schools in 2017 to improve the teacher-pupil ratio and fill vacancies that arose from introduction of early childhood development.

A few years ago, Government froze staff recruitment citing unbalanced cash flows that had a bloated workforce gobbling 80 percent of revenue.

The freeze is part of the IMF Staff Monitored Programme which prescribes Civil Service rationalisation.

Primary and Secondary Education Minister Dr Lazarus Dokora told The Sunday Mail last week that Treasury has given the Civil Service Commission permission to recruit 10 000 qualified teachers when schools open in January.

“I had a fruitful meeting with Finance and Economic Development Minister Patrick Chinamasa, and he is supportive of the education sector,” said Minister Dokora.

“When schools open (next term), 10 000 teachers will come on board. The CSC has already been given the green light (to recruit them).”

Information gathered by this paper show that about 5 800 new ECD teachers will be engaged in January, while 500 other tutors will fill vacant junior school posts.

Another 732 will go to secondary schools.

Minister Dokora said qualified ECD teachers were on demand following the expansion of lower level education since 2013 and the introduction of the new curriculum.

About 4 000 qualified teachers and university graduates who majored in non-teaching disciplines are tutoring 427 826 ECD pupils.

“With the kind of support we are getting from Treasury, we hope to improve our teacher-pupil ratio to acceptable standards, while ECD will be manned by qualified personnel,” said the minister.

“Most teachers in ECD are not trained, so we hope to increase the figure. Some of them are general teachers and not qualified to deal with ECD, but we hope to improve.”

Latest Government statistics show that 98 263 out of 117 490 practising teachers were trained.

Zimbabwe has 2 374 secondary and 5 805 primary schools with an enrolment of nearly four million.

Minister Dokora said the country’s learning institutions were now manned by 80 percent qualified teachers, with the remainder comprising university and Advanced Level graduates.