By Jessica Mwansa
WE are happy with the Government’s decision to decentralise the confirmation processes of teachers at district levels through the District Education Board Secretary (DEBS) and Teaching Service Commission (TSC) offices, National Action for Quality Education in Zambia (NAQEZ) has said.
NAQEZ Executive Director Aaron Chansa has however noted that the Human Resource committees only became active during last year’s teachers’ recruitment and a lot of cases are pending at district level due to lack of such officers.
“A lot of cases are pending where the Teaching Service Commission has no capacity to work on cases of confirmation, upgrades, and promotions. There is a need to see more financial attachments to the Teaching Service Commission,” Mr. Chansa said.
Mr Chansa said for TSC to allow these decentralised structures to work and confirm or promote teachers, there must be treasury authority as well as money available to fund the actions and has pleaded to the Ministry of Finance and National Planning to help the TSC.
He says for a long time now, some components of the education sector such as special education and infrastructure development have been neglected mainly due to lack of funding.
“We have few schools suitably built for differently abled people and the teachers that have been trained to handle special education classes lack motivation while others have shunned to handle the classes,” he said.
He added that there is need for proper funding and suitably built infrastructure with learning and teaching materials required to motivate the teachers of special education.
“To improve special education in Zambia, the Government should ensure children who are differently abled receive quality education in conducive learning infrastructure,” he said.
