October 5, was International Teachers’ Day. I join the rest of society in expressing how indebted to the teaching fraternity I am. Their contribution to raising a knowledge society is recognized and fully appreciated. In the case of Zambia, teachers in government preschools, primary and secondary schools are in excess of 150,000 – making teaching the largest single group of professionals in the civil service or in the formal sector. The number of Teachers is more than nurses, soldiers and policemen combined. When we add teachers in private schools, the total number in employment comes close to 200,000 or one-fifth of all workers in the formal sector.
The role of a teacher in society can never be underestimated. One a weekday, teachers are responsible for looking after more than half of the country’s population, our children. The demographic group of 3 to 18 years are pupils in preschool, primary and secondary schools; they account for over 50% of Zambia’s population. The Zambian government, hence, has attached extreme importance to this category of workers called teachers, as their work helps shape the future of the country. In terms of funding, education receives a reasonable chunk of the budget and teachers in particular are among the few public workers, unlike their counterparts in municipal councils or parastatals, that are paid regularly. It is inevitable that these teachers in government that are employed and regularly paid can feel proud and appreciated as elite and essential workers. However, it is also important that they ought to fully appreciate government effort and be ready to sacrifice a little to make education a success for all our pupils.
Despite so much favour and attention from government, the education sector is besieged with a number of problems. Perhaps the most serious of these problems are three: the covid-19 pandemic has disrupted learning over the past one and half years; the number of teachers relative to pupils is far inadequate’ and the funding from government is barely adequate to meet even some of the basic needs like teaching materials, furniture and infrastructure.
The outbreak of covid-19 was unforeseen and resulted in closure of schools for abnormally lengthy periods. This affected learners. It is now an absolute necessity and emergency that schools do everything possible and utilize every time available to teach so that pupils catch up on the lost time. As regards insufficient number of teachers, albeit large class sizes, the solution lies in government being able to recruit more teachers. According to pronouncements by government, there are about 60,000 trained, but unemployed teachers that are either roaming the streets or working in simple jobs like mobile money booths or as fuel attendants or restaurant waiters. Government has failed to employ them because it is broke and consequently cannot fund the payroll. The inadequacy of the employed teachers has resulted into a crisis of large class sizes, averaging around more than 50 pupils per class per teacher. Outside Lusaka, Copperbelt and Southern provinces the pupil-to- teacher ratio sometimes gets to as bad as 80 pupils to 1 teacher. This crisis has placed Zambia in the bottom league of countries with the worst education systems, far worse than neighbors like DR Congo, Zimbabwe or Botswana. We are competing with Central Africa Republic and Malawi in this anomaly. Government had set target of 40 pupils to 1 teacher sometime back; but even that isn’t met by the majority of government schools even in the urban areas. The rest of the third world averages around 30, most of Europe and Asia is below 20, while the Scandinavian countries are below 10 pupils to 1 teacher. The consequences of large class sizes, albeit pupil-to- teacher ratio on learning are severe: teachers can’t mark class exercises or homework; they can’t give adequate personalized attention to learners; and can’t enforce discipline or offer adequate counselling to pupils. The inadequate marking, checking, assessment and feedback results into pupils with problems to read, to write and calculate properly. This problem is very evident in social media; most young people writing in the comments sections in social media are unable to spell properly, cannot punctuate and cannot write using basic English grammar rules. The recruitment of more teachers is therefore, an absolute emergency for government to resolve this crisis of functional illiteracy – an average citizen is unable write nor to comprehend a written document.
Put simply, the three urgent problems in education are insufficient contact hours due to lengthy closure of schools in the wake of covid-19; large class sizes that are compromising the effectiveness of learning; and insufficient teaching materials, furniture and infrastructure. The emergency interventions from the Ministry of Education, hence, ought to be targeted towards resolving these problems.
To improve on contact hours and catch up on the lost time, there should be no unnecessary stoppages in teaching. The decision by the teachers to close schools on Teachers Day, which is not a gazetted public holiday, was shocking, irresponsible and a dereliction of professional duty. This form of luxury must not be a habit in the new deal era where a serious leadership has taken over, promising to change from playing to working in order to develop the country. Teachers need to be reminded that you cannot operate in Canaan with an Egyptian mentality. The reckless and unconstitutional conduct of teachers is not only a sabotage on education, but also a form of premeditated damage to GDP; pupils contribute to the economy by supporting bus operators and sellers of food. Closing a school is undesirable. The Minister of Education in the new dawn must be reminded that change meant change; we cannot continue to entertain ungazetted holidays or unnecessary closures of schools. That was illegal and inconsistent with the spirit of rule of law and orderliness as reiterated by the President. Just as there is no holiday on Nurses Day or Police Day, we should not be entertaining such luxury among teachers. October has four week ends and two public holidays (National Day of Prayer and Independence Day); those can be utilized by those that value resting.
The second intervention is that government must look for money to recruit at least 15,000 teachers every year in order to address the emergency problem of scandalous pupil-teacher ratio, especially in rural areas. We have recently heard some teacher unions or groups calling for increased salaries of serving teachers on the pretext that most of them are indebted and demotivated. This again is Egyptian thinking, which is completely undesirable in Canaan. The little money that is available should go towards recruiting new teachers. The old teachers can think of restructuring their debts or adjusting their budgets. Government has a bigger and more important role to look after all citizens, including those unemployed teachers and nurses on the streets. Those asking for higher salaries at the expense of using the money to employ new workers, are just greedy. The Minister of Finance should pay attention to more pressing matters, instead.
Just observing aloud….
