Temp teachers might lose jobs

The Ohangwena regional education directorate has confirmed that there is overstaffing in some primary schools, while secondary schools are understaffed.

It is addressing the situation by transferring teachers from overstaffed schools to understaffed schools – a solution that has been criticised in some quarters.

The Endola circuit is said to have a surplus of 67 teachers and seven heads of department.The regional director of education, Isak Hamatwi, said the situation was created by the school curriculum.

“We cannot really call it understaffing or overstaffing, but it is just a situation created by the school curriculum and the teaching norms. The issues of understaffing can be perceived at secondary school, while overstaffing is at primary schools. The curriculum can demand employing five teachers, while the teaching norm only requires three teachers. It will appear as if you are overstaffed with three teachers,” Hamatwi explained.

“We are trying to sort it out internally by transferring teachers from overstaffed schools to understaffed ones, but this is only working for teachers in temporary teaching posts and not for those in permanent positions. For those in permanent posts, we have to wait until they resign voluntarily then we can transfer those posts to other schools.”

Hamatwi said at the moment the region had 4 995 teachers at 262 schools.Following its good grade 10 examination results last year, the Ohangwena Region was struggling at the beginning of the year to place all its grade 11 learners in local schools.

The regional office had to squeeze in pupils at full schools, which contributed to understaffing.

“We did not place learners according to the curriculum, but according to the number of classrooms. Teachers are under pressure, but they are managing the situation because we could put up to 15 extra learners in one class,” he said.





Last week the Ohangwena education directorate decided to ground all its vehicles until further notice because of budget cuts.

A source from that region said that in the past schools were creating teaching posts without informing the regional office.

“This problem has only been identified now as the ministry is in serious financial difficulties created by the budget cut. We were even given an option to get rid of some of the teachers, which is not possible.

“That is the reason why the ministry is taking so long to advertise the 2018 teaching posts. They want to make sure which posts must be advertised and which not. Most of the teaching posts currently occupied by temporary teachers will not be advertised for 2018,” the source said.

The source also said that it was difficult to transfer teachers from overstaffed primary schools to understaffed secondary schools.

Meanwhile, the ministry of education is advertising 2 569 teaching positions nationwide for 2018.

A statement issued by the ministry's spokesperson, Absalom Absalom, said 79 of these vacancies were for principals, 198 for HoDs, while 2 292 were for ordinal teachers.

He said these teaching posts were identified as critical and must be filled.

“It should be noted that 119 of the 2 569 posts to be advertised have been newly created due to pressing needs; whereas the remaining 2 450 posts are currently occupied by temporary teachers whose contracts will come to an end on 31 December 2017, thus rendering the posts vacant,” Absalom said.

The vacancy bulletin will be an insert in Namibian Sun this Friday.

It will also appear in Republikein and Allgemeine Zeitung on Friday, while other daily and weekly newspapers will carry it next week.

ILENI NANDJATO