By Cathy Maulidi:
The Ministry of Education has disclosed that public secondary schools are being run with a deficit of 30,000 teachers.
Principal Secretary for Education Chikondano Mussa said primary schools, on the other hand, have a deficit of 35,000 teachers.
Mussa told members of the Public Accounts Committee (Pac) of Parliament during a meeting Wednesday that the situation is worrisome.
“The country’s [public] secondary schools have about 12,000 teachers while primary schools have 110,000 teachers, who are not enough when compared to the number of learners, which continues to grow.
- Advertisement -
“I can’t say how much we need but we may need billions [of Kwacha] to fill the gap. I don’t think there will ever be time when everything is perfect but we will always ensure that our teacher-student ratio is manageable.
“To say that we can train and recruit all of them and then get to the preferred one-to-40 teacher-student ratio at secondary and one-to-60 at primary [school level] is not an easy thing and will never be an easy thing. We are just showing that this is what we need; we can put a timeframe but all we need are resources,” Mussa said.,”
She said the ministry plans to recruit 3,000-plus secondary school teachers though the plan was to recruit 5,000.
Pac Chairperson Mark Botomani has described the situation as “worrisome”, saying this shows that people in the country lack seriousness on education matters.
