Teacher ‘Pools’ to overcome shortages in school – Akila
View(s):The Ministry of Education (MoE) is to introduce a pooling system for teachers to avoid teacher’s shortages in schools.
Under this move, teachers of a particular subject will be one pool and, in the event of a shortage of a teacher in another school, a teacher will be drawn from this pool to temporarily fill the vacancy.
“For instance, if there are 30 teachers teaching English in a school, the services of all of them will not be required at the same time. Hence, a couple of them may be available to teach in another school for a short period,” Education Minister Akila Virja Kariyawasam explained.
He said they will first try it out in the National schools and thereafter, make the facility available in Provincial schools.
Currently, as many as 10,000 teachers, of the 200,000, are on leave, on a given day, while teachers also take leave for their studies and others are on maternity leave.
Minister Kariyawasam said that one of the issues the MoE faces is that, some of the teachers serving in National schools are reluctant to move out, thereby creating problems in balancing the available number of teachers.
He said that it was unfair for some of the schools, when they do not have teachers, while some have excess.
He said, last year, 14,000 teachers who served for more than 10 years in the same school, were transferred to balance the number of teachers.
Minister Kariyawasam said that, in future, they would not appoint any new teachers to schools which have an excess.
- Damith Wickremasekara