MY POINT OF VIEW: Turning to teachers' welfare | Fletcher Simwaka

Source: The BNL Times

Wednesday, 17 March 2010

Recent media reports on delayed salaries of teachers don’t make for good reading. In fact they have a potential of throwing our currently picking education standards into hopelessness.



It is the situation that begs the question: Are we as a nation serious about the welfare of teachers? Should we be thinking that our education can make tremendous progress with these demotivating reports of teachers’ salaries?

Admittedly, various stakeholders have been crying foul about the education standards in the country. Fears of a nation producing poorly qualified personnel were rife in the country.

Words of hope, however, echoed across the country when president Bingu wa Mutharika said his government would invest in education. Mutharika himself emphasises the point in various graduation ceremonies that no nation has developed without investment in sound human capital. By investment, it goes without saying that the president meant sound education ought to be the way to go.

That isn’t all. Mutharika’s administration has made tremendous strides in the education sectors. Many schools in sorry sights are being renovated, with many new ones being built. This is not to talk of the last year’s closure of private secondary schools deemed below par. These are wonderful developments really. And just recently, the nation was told government would open a Teachers Training Centres (TTC) in Mangochi.

While all these efforts need to be applauded, the welfare of teachers still remains the stumbling block in the nation’s quest to attain quality education. And as some stakeholders in the education sector have put it, the last month’s salaries delay for teachers is a very worrisome situation for this country.
Already, numerous are the complaints of dwindling standards of education in Malawi, with scores and scores of qualified teachers leaving the education sector for satisfactory working environment elsewhere.

For instance, Chancellor College and Domasi College have been training teachers for a long time, yet there is still a limited number of qualified teachers in secondary schools. Why? Most of these teachers end up employing their knowledge in other government departments, non-governmental organisations and the private sector.

Yes, one would be excused to argue those teaches go there in search of hefty packages. However, much of this habit, it is true, is orchestrated by the suffocating environment in the teaching profession.

Most teachers in community day secondary schools put up in very poor houses not befitting the status of a teacher. The houses don’t have electricity and some houses even reach the extent of leaking during the rainy season.

And now, the delay of salaries for teachers makes the situation all the more hopeless. And the result of all this could be what Link for Education Governance Andrew Usi recently pointed out. “Such hardships teachers face may lead to low productivity while affecting the results of examinations at national level.”

No one would love to work in a bad environment. Surely every human being quests for better life and teachers are no exception. Just recently government discovered that most teachers were engaging in part time- lessons. The lessons were banned, of course, which was a good development.

However, government should also have realised that those part-time lessons were meant to augment the miserable package the teachers are getting. As such, government should have been now combing for ways of motivating teachers who, if truth be told, are the back bone of our quality human resource.

Building various secondary schools, we know, is one such welcome step. More has to be done. Students being trained as teachers in various institutions need to be motivated well in advance by giving the teachers their monthly salaries timely. Really, teachers’ woes are, by all means, the nation’s woes.