A MATABELELAND North-based rural empowerment lobby group has expressed concern over government’s failure to fill vacant teacher posts in the province, and has warned of another poor pass rate during the final year examinations as a result.
BY NQOBANI NDLOVU
Rural Communities Empowerment Trust (Rucet) co-ordinator, Vumani Ndlovu said the shortage of teachers in Matabeleland North is so dire amid reports some schools are operating with less than a quarter of the required teacher complement.
“The situation has been worse during this third term, at a time when pupils were preparing for public examinations. Some schools have one or two teachers only,” he said in a statement yesterday.
“The situation is so dire, especially in primary schools, as the few teachers in some schools have to take care of more than four grades/classes, leaving the Grade 7 exam classes ill-prepared for exams.”
According to a Primary and Secondary Education ministry report, Matabeleland North and South provinces have been perennially posting the worst Grade 7 results countrywide owing to, among other reasons, lack of teachers.
“We envisage another worse performance by schools in Matabeleland North, as this situation already compounds a plethora of educational challenges that contribute to high failure rate in the province, such as inadequate qualified teachers because of lack of a teacher training college in the province, deployment of teachers who cannot converse in local languages, among many others,” Ndlovu added.
Recently, four Lupane villagers were arrested following their shutting down of a school in protest against the presence of a non-Ndebele speaking headmistress at Mlamuli Secondary School in the Matabeleland North capital.
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The deployment of non-Ndebele speaking teachers in Matabeleland has, in recent years, raised the ire of radical groups from the region, who blame it for contributing to low pass rates in schools in the region.
Ndlovu added: “The shortage of teachers is being experienced despite the fact that there are thousands of newly-trained teachers that have not been absorbed into the ministry, as a result of the public service employment freeze.
“We urge the government to lift the employment freeze for provinces like Matabeleland North that have experienced education decline since independence.
“Rucet reiterates that the government should take full responsibility for the expected high failure rate in this year’s public examinations for schools in Matabeleland North.”
