In September, the Ministry of Education, Arts and Culture gazetted a number of teaching posts country-wide. This prompted unemployed qualified teachers and prospective teachers to apply. However, the process of shortlisting interviewees and appointing the outstanding candidate seems to be subjective, corrupt and time-wasting.
It appears like most of the interview panels and school boards don’t know how, who, why and when to appoint the suitable candidate who fairly fits for a particular teaching post. Today, most schools conduct interviews merely for the sake of formality, not on the basis of quality and merit!
In other words, teachers are a being appointed on the basis of bribery, conspiracy, comradeship, friendship and bio-relatedness.
To drive my point home, there are scenarios where schools call hundreds of interviewees to battle it out for one teaching post while deep down they have already decided who will get the job.
The chosen candidate is often either a lover or a relative of someone, who might not even meet the requirements; both academically and rationally.
To make the matter worse, that someone might only be in possession of a failed Grade 12 certificate while snubbing individuals with a honours degree in education. It’s better to appoint your preferable persons without conducting an interview (behind closed doors) instead of wasting other people’s resources and time. Some people travel thousands of kilometres just to attend an interview of which the favourite is already known.
With such malpractices, are you really building the Namibian education system or are you toppling it? Are your decisions aligned to one of the four main educational goals; namely ‘quality’? It irks me to the core when our schools recruit unqualified teachers while there are qualified teachers sitting idle at home or roaming around the streets, with their credential qualifications resting under their suitcase. Similarly, this is like replacing a pilot with a stranger from the street to fly an aeroplane full of passengers, obviously the passengers’ lives will be in peril. Therefore, this is the same situation to that of the learners being taught by unqualified teachers. How do we expect learners to perform fruitfully if they are being taught by novice teachers who lack the in-depth knowledge of the subject?
In conclusion, school boards, educational inspectors and permanent secretaries should perspicaciously look into the matter of selection and appointment of merit teachers. The greatest remedy of corruption is transparency.
Tomas Nehale
Concerned unemployed teacher