Ministry of Education on Monday announced the recruitment of 1 599 and promotion of 1 000 secondary school teachers in a bid to improve the quality of education in the country.

Ministry of Education Principal Secretary Chikondano Mussa said in a statement the recruitment represented the largest hiring of secondary school teachers by government in the country’s history.

Mussa: We will continue to improve the quality of education

She said: “Government would like to assure the nation that it will continue reducing the current high student-teacher ratio to improve the quality of education across all education subsectors.”

Mussa said the current high teacher to student ratio was at 1:70 against the recommended 1:40.

The new recruits, to teach science, language, humanities, technical education and special needs education, are an addition to the 12 773 previously registered secondary school teachers in the country.

Reacting to the development, education expert Limbani Nsapato and Civil Society Education Coalition (Csec) executive director Benedicto Kondowe said while the recruitment and promotion, were welcome, there was need for in-service training to improve quality and skills gap within the system.

Nsapato said: “This is a good development and a step in the right direction. However, given that over 20 percent of teachers are untrained, especially those in community day secondary schools [CDSSs], there is need for intensive in-service training.”

On his part, Kondowe said government need to develop an elaborate recruitment plan that will ensure that each academic year there is a provision for consistent recruitment of teachers.

He said the newly recruited 1 000 teachers were insignificant, considering the gap in the current teacher to student ratio.

“Government should also promote equitable deployment policies that favour the poor, considering that 90 percent of all under-qualified teachers are deployed to CDSSs that form two-thirds of all secondary schools in the country and mostly service poor children,” said Kondowe.

In a separate interview, Teachers Union of Malawi (TUM) secretary general Charles Kumchenga said government should now move to work on the issue of affecting teachers.

“This is a good beginning and our desire is that this continues. We also have the issue of salary arrears which needs to be dealt with,” he said.

Earlier this year, government also recruited 2 200 primary school teachers in the Initial Primary Teacher Education cohort, bringing the total number of primary school teachers to about 78 000.

So far, the country has a deficit of 50 000 primary school teachers, according to quality education advocates.

Recently, a new study called on government to review its public service workers’ recruitment freeze and promotions policy as advised by international bilateral and multilateral institutions, if Malawi’s public service delivery is to improve.

The study’s finding, showed that the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank warnings that the public sector wage bill would swell to unsustainable levels has led to government imposing a recruitment freeze and promotions at the cost of delivery of service.

In the 2022/23 National Budget, wages and salaries are estimated at K670.28 billion, representing 33.2 percent of the K2.84 trillion budget and 5.9 percent of the country’s gross domestic product.

The report titled: ‘The Public versus Austerity: Why Public Sector Wage Bill Constraints Must End: Insights from Malawi’s Education and Health Sectors’ exposes how austerity cuts in many countries, including Malawi, have blocked the recruitment of nurses, teachers and other essential public sector workers.

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