TEACHER
Beyond The Recruitment of Teachers
The new dawn government has done the needful and employed 30,496 teachers in the civil service. A promise they made right after winning the August 12th., 2021, elections. This development in itself should not be controversial at all but should be applauded especially with so many of our people being in dire need of a job. Against the 90,000 plus teachers who applied for consideration in the recruitment process, perhaps one can argue that this government should have hired more teachers than the figures mentioned, or names published in the newspaper. However, in defense of this government, we are all aware that it has only been 11 months since this administration got elected to public office, and they are already making difficult and bold decisions with very little to almost no money at all. Hence, for any objective, hopeful and well-meaning Zambian, this exercise of employing 30,496 teachers within the first year of serving as government as the new dawn administration is progress indeed. And we can only anticipate that there is more to come in the remaining 4 years before the next general elections of August 2026. Nonetheless, the Teaching Service Commission (TSC) has a more daunting task than just helping with the recruitment process. In fact, the most important thing to do now as we go forward in this era of free education is to improve service delivery. The quality of education is not measured by the number of children enrolled in schools, or by nice classrooms or desks delivered to these schools, but rather the things that we teach our pupils or students who attend these public schools. Therefore, beyond the recruitment of teachers we should seriously undertake the task of evaluating and revising the school curriculum from grade 1 to grade 12.
There is no doubt that anyone who has carefully studied or taken the time to look at what our children learn in schools, will definitely agree with me that it leaves much to be desired; especially if we expect them to compete in this modern day and age. It is unthinkable that we still have that colonial type syllabi in most if not all public schools. For example, in 2022 we still have teachers who are trained and instructed to teach students things like; it was David Livingstone who discovered the Victoria falls, or even worse force the same students to learn and memorize what is produced in the great plains of North America, but yet the same young ones know nothing about the great plains of Barotseland. We need to be serious for once as a country and set up the next generation for success and not failure. This achievement of recruiting more teachers provides us with an opportunity to start afresh now, to interrogate other inefficiencies in our education sector and begin a painful but much needed discussion about what is wrong with our education system. And so, let me propose herewith that, the most pressing issue we deal with right away is the need to have a complete overhaul of all public-school curriculum or syllabi. It is unfortunate that we have to waste 12 years of our lives in primary and secondary schools, learning nothing of consequence to the realities that surrounds us. Most of these kids who learn about the Prairies of Canada or North America, will probably never ever travel to, or see North America. If anything, should any need arise for them to know about such information; I am sure this google generation will have no difficulties to search or look up this kind of information in such an instance.
Today, the United Party for National Development (UPND) together with the alliance partners have a unique opportunity to fix our education once and for all. In fact, what should be done is that the government needs to task the Teaching Service Commission (TSC) to evaluate the quality of education in our public schools. The commission should set-up a research and development department in charge of investigation and gathering of all the findings, and then present a full report to parliament, the ministry of education and the powers that be for consideration. Zambia needs more STEAM schools now more than ever which are publicly funded, and of course these schools will focus on teaching relevant science, technology, engineering, the arts, and math for purposes of problem-solving as well as making sure that grade 12 graduates have tangible skills after leaving secondary school. The new dawn administration will do well to build an economy that will employ grade 12 leavers, because of the quality of education and skills that these young folks would have attained even before advancing to college or university. Just like our forebears who were employed upon graduating from secondary school with a form 5 certificate during the post-independence era. If we can do that, our country will be the talk of the region, if not Africa and the world over. Sadly, what we have now is an education system that cannot even make our college and university graduates compete in the region. Truth be told, our quality of education is so pathetic that if one graduates from a college or university in Zambia; not only do they struggle to get a job at home, but they will be so lucky to even get employed by any of our neighboring countries and much less other countries abroad. Just like all things in life, the foundation of anything you are trying to build is very important. Therefore, we have to fix this education situation from the bottom up.
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This country has a lot of retired educators who have served Zambia with distinction as teachers, headteachers, principals etc. The knowledge and wisdom possessed by this constituency of elders can be a reservoir of formidable experience from which the Teaching Service Commission (TSC) can mobilize and seek guidance during the new curriculum formulation process. In my view, the much-needed revised curriculum from grade 1 to grade 12 should be nationalist, patriotic but yet with a global outlook in all the subjects taught in public schools. I cannot believe for the life of me, that social studies and civic education textbooks do not mention the name Dean Mung’omba and others alike. What kind of heroes do these young Zambians of today learn about and look up to? Yes, we need to learn about Japan, China, Brazil or even the United States of America. But in all of these lessons, we need to answer some fundamental questions such as, how does this topic of another country, be it their discoveries, innovations, culture, or history relate to me as a Zambian and Africa? How does this education help a Zambian secondary school student fit into the world picture? Lastly, we should commend the new dawn administration for the promise kept as they have recruited 30,496 teachers who will be a great asset to our nation. We wish the government well with the implementation of these recruitments, for which we understand will not be easy at all. Again, the next step beyond this recruitment phase is to improve the quality of our education in public schools without fail.
~ Aaron Ng’ambi
political Scientist
[email protected]
Source – www.zambianobserver.com
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