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Opinion - Abolish job interviews for teachers

2023-01-09  Staff Reporter

Opinion - Abolish job interviews for teachers

Ngandu Hisckia

Job interviews or entry tests are used by employers to reduce the number of applicants who can be interviewed orally in less time. 

Entry tests are normally common when the number of posts for a particular job is less than the number of qualified applicants for that job. Since the purpose of entry tests (interviews) is to reduce the number of applicants, why can’t the government find a better way to reduce the number of applicants? Thousands of applicants travel for more than 500km for a single position, which is a waste of money. 

These applicants paid huge amounts of money to universities to obtain their qualifications, yet they are spending on transport, accommodation and food to attend an interview for a position they don’t get in the end. 

In addition, not all interviews are fairly conducted. It is always a family member of principals, teachers or applicants who come from recognised family who gets the job and then the rest have to pay a lot of money to travel back to their places and spend extra to make copies of their documents and apply for other positions. 

Graduates (applicants) risk their lives to travel hoping to get jobs they studied for and in return, some get to lose their lives in car accidents. 

This seems that government doesn’t care about the future of the country. They say education is the key to a better future but now education seems to be the key to poverty since the government is failing to provide job opportunities to the youth, especially recently graduated teachers. 

If the government cannot provide job opportunities, then the government can at least abolish interviews so that schools and personnel officers just appoint one of the 1 000 applicants as that will save the unemployed graduates a lot of money. 

The government should also work with institutions of higher learning as that will help them know which professions require more graduates and which require few graduates. Moreover, why is the government failing to build schools?  Some schools are overcrowded and teachers are given a lot of classes to teach yet we have a lot of graduates sitting at home. I don’t think over-occupied teachers are able to give quality education to learners. 

Abolishing interviews will make it better as it will save lives and money by not travelling when the post is already earmarked for a specific person. 

Nurses are just appointed without going through interviews, yet teachers and other professionals need to go through hell before getting appointed. Government should look into that!


2023-01-09  Staff Reporter

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