Where have all the teachers gone?

Monday May 3, 2010
Where have all the teachers gone?

WE OFTEN hear of students absenting themselves from school. Of course, the school authorities aren’t happy when it comes to students not attending class.
Yet, just walk into any school and it is disturbing to discover that some classes have no teachers. One school on a particular day had 17 of its 96 teachers absent from school.
According to the headmistress this has become a perennial problem and quite a bane to the school. She explained: “There is no more allocation for substitute teachers these days.”
In fact, this has become too common a problem at almost all schools for a long time. Some teachers are on maternity leave, some on sick leave and many others attending or giving courses elsewhere.
Yet some others have to attend meetings. On average, 10% to 12% of the teachers would not be in school during normal hours.
For parents, there can be many implications to this problem. Firstly, students will not have teachers in class to teach them and this will affect their studies. They are either in class doing what they want or sent to the library if it is not occupied.
Secondly, when parents realise this problem they fear that their children are not receiving enough education in school. Those with the means will opt for tuition classes. The poor parents live with it, praying hard for the school to provide the best for their children.
On the part of the Education Ministry, two steps can be taken to overcome this problem.
Schools should be allowed to employ substitute teachers immediately when classes are without regular teachers. Secondly, schools should not allow teachers to attend or give any in-service course during normal school days. Reserve all these for the term breaks.
Some teachers say they have to attend too many meetings at school, district, state and national levels. Reining in this problem needs the support of the ministry and the education departments.
Besides, more male teachers have to be trained and employed by the ministry to lessen the consequence of many going on maternity leave.
Most schools these days have more female teachers than male.
The gender ratio has to improve, especially at the secondary level.
The absence of regular teachers during normal school days has affected students in almost all schools in the country. Parents are certainly not too happy about this, and many parents have raised the matter during PTA meetings.
What parents desire is that teachers should not be allowed to be away from school during normal teaching hours other than for maternity leave. In this case, there must be a substitute.
No co-curriculum activities should affect the normal teaching hours. Let all such activities be outside such hours.
Most parents solely depend on teachers in schools to teach their children and their expectation is always high when it comes to this. Not all parents can afford to send their children for tuition when proper teaching is not done in school.

DR M.A. NAIR,
Kuantan.