LETTER OF THE DAY - Halt teacher training for five years
Published:Monday | September 6, 2010 | 12:00 AM
The Editor, Sir:
The Ministry of Education and the teacher-training institutions should halt the training of teachers for at least five years given the oversupply of trained teachers in the system that are yet to find employment in any of our state-run educational institutions.
The market is saturated with qualified individuals who are desperately seeking employment. What do we do with the nearly 2,000 teachers who are job hunting?
I am sure that principals can attest to the fact that their offices are bombarded with numerous applications from these individuals who are yet to be employed. I have observed that most of these applicants are people who are just leaving teachers colleges. It is not beneficial to the education system or to the individual who, after many years of rigorous, training cannot find a job on the local market. This is now going to open the door once again for the mass exodus of teachers from our country. This inevitably will result in a brain drain from the classroom.
The financial resources of the country might not allow it to build more schools now so as to employ more teachers. What the policymakers will now have to do is to make a firm decision on how they are going to deal with such a pathetic situation. We cannot continue to have a situation where the supply of teachers exceeds demand. The practitioners in the field of education may now have to sit down and examine the possibility of training teachers only in areas that are critical to the development of the country.
Educational practitioners
Notice I say educational practitioners and not those on the outside who have the audacity to speak among about problems dogging education as if they have authority on the matter.
It would be commendable to establish a think tank with reputable educators with requisite skills to study the problems(s) of the education system so as to advise the policymakers how to deal with the myriad problems facing us in education including the unemployment of hundreds of trained teachers.
Let us not believe for one moment that teaching and teachers are the neglected lot and that is why has been given such low priority. Let us remember that teachers are the decisive element in the development of any country and that we can make or break a nation. In so doing, we deserve to be better treated by all.
I am, etc.
HARVEY BROWN