Prime
Janet puts breaks on transfer of teachers
A health worker vaccinates one of the teachers against Covid-19 at Kitante Primary School in Kampala last month. PHOTO/ABUBAKER LUBOWA
What you need to know:
- The transfer will resume after the ministry completes an exercise of validation of secondary school teachers.
The Minister of Education, Ms Janet Museveni, has directed the Education Service Commission to halt the transfer of secondary teachers in government-aided schools across the country.
While addressing journalists at Uganda Media Centre yesterday, the spokesperson of the Ministry of Education, Dr Denis Mugimba, said the minister’s directive followed loopholes in the recruitment of secondary teachers.
According to Mugimba, some teachers who had been transferred have not been reporting to their new stations, while those who left their former schools were not replaced.
“Teachers are supposed to spend at least more than seven years in a school before they are transferred, but some teachers were being transferred after spending only a few years in a school. Others would spend more than seven years without being transferred,” Mr Mugimba said.
It is against this background that Ms Museveni directed the ministry to halt any further transfers until the Education Service Commission rectifies the transfer exercise.
“Transfer of teachers will resume after the Education Service Commission has completed an exercise of validation of secondary teachers across the country,” Mr Mugimba said.
“After this validation exercise, the Commission will determine how many permanent and contract teachers each school has, whether teachers on the payroll belong to those schools and how long each teacher has spent in his or her current school,’’ he added.
The validation exercise is slated to resume after the government has reopened secondary schools.
Government closed schools for the second time on June 18 locking home more than 15m learners.
According to sources in the Education ministry, the government plans to reopen tertiary institutions in November before reopening primary and secondary schools next year. It is estimated that about 5m target groups including teachers and elders would have been vaccinated against Covid-19 by early next year.
The more the teachers, non-teaching staff and the students above 18 years are vaccinated, the sooner the government will reopen schools.
Dr Mugimba yesterday said President Museveni will announce the officials’ dates for the reopening of all institutions of learning. As of yesterday, more than 260,000 teachers across the country had been vaccinated.
According to Dr Mugimba, 269,455 (49 per cent) had received one dose of the jab by yesterday morning. Only 90,000 had taken the second dose.
There are at least 550,000 teachers in both government and private schools across the country .This means a total of 280,545 teachers are yet to get vaccinated.
The Ministry of Education is, however, worried about low uptake of vaccination, something it said might delay the reopening of schools.
Mr Mugimba said together will the Ministry of Health, they would soon come up with strategies to rally teachers to take up vaccination.
The chairperson of the National Private Educational Institutions Association, Mr Hasadu Kirabira, wondered what decision government would take if a large percentage of teachers don’t get vaccinated before the reopening of schools.
