Tanzania seeks science and maths teachers from EA to bridge shortfall
Fast learner: Experts however warn that cross-border movement of teachers could be complicated by differences in wages paid across EA countries. Picture: File
Tanzania is planning to employ thousands of science and mathematics teachers from East Africa to help bridge its shortfall of 85,000 tutors.
The country expects to start recruiting qualified tutors from EAC partner states from next month.
Last year, EAC member countries picked education as one of the sectors that would initially benefit from free movement of labour, under the Common Market.
The deal is expected to help remove the imbalances in the teaching market that have left Kenya with an oversupply even as its neighbours experience acute shortages.
Got the green light
Deputy Minister for East African Co-operation Abdullah Abdallah said in Arusha that the EAC Council of Ministers had given Tanzania the green light to employ teachers this year to bridge its growing gap.
He said the recent EAC Council of Ministers in Burundi considered and approved Tanzania’s application to source science and maths teachers from around East Africa.
The Ministry of Education and Vocational Training said it was considering recruiting 3,200 mathematics and science secondary teachers from Kenya and Uganda, initially.
It is understood that Tanzania had approached Kenyan Vice-President Kalonzo Musyoka over this plan. Kenya is on record as saying the recruitment would be good news for hundreds of teachers yet to be absorbed by its Teachers Service Commission.
Kenya, which has a shortage of more than 60,000 teachers, has an almost equal number of unemployed tutors.
But labour market experts warn that cross-border movement of professionals such as teachers could be complicated by the huge differences in wages paid across the region.
Kenya pays the highest wages and it is feared that its nationals seeking employment in neighbouring states may expect similar remuneration.
Concern is also rising over the differences in education systems and curricula among the five EAC member states.
Tanzania needs nearly 31, 000 new teachers for both primary and secondary schools within two years to provide adequate education to the ever-increasing number of students enrolled in the past two decades.
Analysts say Tanzania has been losing key teaching staff, particularly for maths and science courses, due to lower remuneration packages.
Most teachers in the country prefer the private sector, where they earn more than the $255 (Tsh400,000) offered by the public sector.
“This means that the country lacks a capacity to enrolment a great many of the children from both the relevant age cohort and those outside it,” he said.
According to the Ministry of Education and Vocational Training statistics, Tanzania secondary school gross enrolment rates stand at five per cent while Kenya stands at 26 per cent, Uganda 12 per cent, Zambia 28 per cent and Zimbabwe 44 per cent.
The Tanzania Government aimed at increasing the present gross enrolment rates of five per cent to 12 per cent by the year 2005 and 20 per cent by the year 2011.
Given the limited government resource envelope, Tanzania will weigh the relative merit of investments in the different levels and types of education with the objective of availing more resources to secondary education in tandem with primary education.
In the interim, e-learning aims to fill in a gap of teachers for both primary and secondary schools across the country, a shortfall that threatens to further weaken the already besieged public education system.
The government has put up 34 new teacher training colleges, adding to the previous 22, while the private sector has established another 44 colleges in the past four years both as an initiative to tackle teachers’ shortage.
The task to cover the teacher shortfall would take Tanzania several years, considering the fact that currently teacher certification is a two-year process.
