GOVERNMENT is withdrawing teachers who are not conversant with local community languages as it enforces the policy stipulating that learners in early childhood development (ECD) should be taught in their mother language.
Some communities have in the past raised concerns over the deployment of teachers who do not speak local languages particularly in primary schools.
The country recognises 16 official languages, but most schools were mainly teaching IsiNdebele and Shona.
In an interview yesterday, Primary and Secondary Education Ministry Permanent Secretary Mrs Tumisang Thabela said in implementing the policy, the Government is trying to address the mismatch in the deployment of teachers in schools.
“In terms of teachers who are deployed to areas where the people are uncomfortable, there are two things that would have happened. It would be a case of mistaken deployment because in the human resource database that we use to deploy, the Public Service Commission does the recruitment, and we ask the applicants to tell us the language that they are proficient with before we make a selection,” she said.
Mrs Thabela said in cases where a teacher is mistakenly deployed in areas where they are not proficient with local languages, Government is obliged to redeploy the teacher.
She said the deployment of teachers who speak local languages is in line with the education policy where pupils in infant schools have to be taught in their mother tongue.
“We are trying to phase out those issues, but once in a while when there has been such mis-match we withdraw those teachers and correct the issue although it will take time to be fully addressed considering the shortages,” said Mrs Thabela.
“It is one of the mandates that the ministry has given us to develop indigenous languages. That is why one of the key policies that we came up with as Government, through the ministry is to make sure that children who are at infant level should be taught in their mother tongue or in the language which is common in their locality, especially in places like metropolitan cities where you have diverse cultures in one classroom.”
Mrs Thabela said it will however, take time to fully remove teachers who do not speak languages spoken in that particular community due to a shortage of teachers trained in the indigenous languages.
She said the policy implementation of teaching infants in their mother language was adopted faster than the teacher capacitation programmes.
“The ministry has what we call a teacher capacity development programme where we are saying one of the greatest priorities is to train teachers in the indigenous languages. That is why Joshua Mqabuko Nkomo Polytechnic, Seke Teachers’ College and universities such as Midlands State University and Great Zimbabwe University have been picked to develop teachers for us,” said Mrs Thabela.
Meanwhile, the ministry is negotiating with the Treasury to increase budgetary allocation for the recruitment of more teachers next year.
Finance and Economic Development Minister Professor Mthuli Ncube presenting the 2023 National Budget said the Government will recruit 7 000 teachers, which 3 000 teachers less than what the Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education had requested during the pre-budget seminar presentations.
Mrs Thabela said the shortage of teachers continues to hamper the delivery of education in the country.
“Obviously the targeted recruitment of 7 000 teachers will continue to constrain us because even 10 000 was not the ideal figure.
It was requested that the Government incrementally provides us with teachers until we get our ideal teacher pupil ratio,” she said.
“When we are talking about 10 000 teachers, we were looking at the situation where currently we really have a shortage of between 25 000 and 50 000 depending on the teacher-pupil ratio that the Government will give us.”
Mrs Thabela said it is encouraging to note that the Treasury has not totally shut the door on them as far as increasing the number of teachers.
“But we have been engaging with the Ministry of Finance and Economic Development and they have said we should work with what we have while they are also looking at their pocket. So we remain hopeful that we might get more teachers,” she said. – The Chronicle
