September 26, 2021 at 10:10 am
The Ministry for Education’s mess on the eve of the start of the scholastic year
Contrary to the image that the Ministry for Education is trying to portray regarding teacher shortage in primary schools, information which reached the union indicates that the Ministry has up to 150 primary classes without a teacher. In one of the most messy exercises carried out in the last decade, several teachers providing essential services in schools including literacy support, complementary teaching, nurture support, subject specialists, support for dyslexia, support for hearing impaired, hospital support etc received a notification that they were being transferred to a primary class from Monday. This means that they shall not continue to provide the support to students in their designated roles.
The MUT is following these deployment cases and is protesting with the Ministry about this unprecedented deployment exercise. The union has already declared a trade dispute with the Ministry earlier this week and is issuing directives to affected teachers.
The Ministry has been boasting for months that it is well prepared to start the new scholastic year. However, it chose to hide this massive problem rather than averting the crisis several months ago. Now, in panic mode, the Ministry for Education is trying to fill these vacancies through a rushed deployment exercise on the eve of the scholastic year, leaving thousands of students without essential services for the entire scholastic year and is expecting teachers to prepare to take a primary class, which they may have never taught, overnight. This is unacceptable.
