TEMPORARY TEACHERS ON ICE

MBABANE- Some schools in the country are operating without enough teachers because government has not employed temporary staff.

It is not clear if they will eventually be employed but currently, government is concentrating on hiring qualified teachers.
Qualified teachers are those who were trained to teach, not those who have O-level certificates or degrees in other fields.

The ministry website stipulates that the Ministry of Education seeks to address the issue of quality and it continues to provide schools with qualified teachers and to mount in-service courses to keep serving teachers up to date with the latest approaches in teaching.

The Teaching Service Commission (TSC) is known to hire temporary teachers, who often include those who had completed Form V and university graduates.
Their contracts vary from three months to two years.

Schools opened on January 26, 2016 but some schools still have a shortage of teachers.

“There are currently no temporary teachers in schools as their contracts ended in December 2015,” said Pat Muir, Principal Secretary (PS) in the Ministry of Education and Training.
“The TSC is in the process of employing qualified teachers and this is ongoing. Whether in the end the commission would employ the teachers or not will be determined by the commission itself,” continued the PS. 
On the other hand, TSC Chairman Simanga Mamba surprisingly said he did not know the difference between a temporary teacher and a permanent one.

He said as a commission, they only employed teachers, not individuals.
“We have spaces for teachers with diplomas and degrees at the moment,” explained Mamba.
He said that if head teachers wanted teachers they should declare this to the commission for employment.
Thabo Nkambule, the Head teacher of Mater Dolorosa Primary School in Mbabane, said there were no temporary teachers at the school and they were not needed.
“For now, the available teachers are equal to the task” said Nkambule.

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