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Primary Teachers in Pakistan threaten Suicide over unpaid Salaries | Teacher Solidarity - 0 views

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    Primary Teachers in Pakistan threaten Suicide over unpaid Salaries
Teachers Without Borders

IRIN Africa | DRC: Millions miss out on basic education | DRC | Children | Education - 0 views

  • KINSHASA, 14 November 2011 (IRIN) - Access to basic education in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) remains poor, with up to seven million children across the vast country out of school - despite a 2010 government decision to make primary education free.
  • It said 25 percent of the primary school-aged children and 60 percent of adolescents were not enrolled in classes.
  • "Even with the announcement of free primary education, parents, many of whom are unemployed and have little means of sustaining themselves, are bearing most of the costs involved in educating their children because of delays in releasing the funds for free education," Ornelie Lelo, communications officer for an education NGO in the capital, SOS Kinshasa, told IRIN.
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  • Education officials have expressed concern over the severe shortage of teachers in public schools. In primary school, the national average is one teacher for 37 pupils, according to the national statistics, but in marginalized or rural areas, there can be more than 100 pupils per class.
  • "Many of the public schools in existence are in deplorable conditions; no blackboards in many of them; in some, children sit on the floor due to lack of desks, and the most worrying concern is encroachment on school land by individuals, many of whom are connected politically," Lelo said. "One can find a pharmacy, restaurant or even bar right in the middle of a school compound - it looks like all open spaces in schools are up for grabs.
  • Tshimbalanga said the average monthly salary for a primary school teacher was $35-40 and since the teachers' salaries are often several months in arrears, parents were forced to chip in. "Generally, teachers, like other Congolese workers, survive on very little, some even less than $1 a day, yet the cost of education is borne by parents, sometimes even up to 65 percent of the total cost," Tshimbalanga said. "In rural areas, some teachers supplement their earnings by working as casual labourers on farms; those in urban areas end up begging for money from their pupils' parents just to survive." To improve the quality of education, Tshimbalanga said, the government had to pay teachers properly. He said the teachers’ union entered into an agreement in 2004 with the government for teachers to be paid a minimum of $208 monthly but six years later, this has not been implemented.
Themba Dlamini

End User Computing NQF3 learnership on 3 June 2013 - 0 views

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    End User Computing Learnership NQF Level 3 Pax Careers (Pty) Ltd. - GP End User Computing Learnership NQF Level 3 Ref: JV-NQF3-B R2500 per month Basic Salary for 12 months... following areas for End User Computing (very little...
Teachers Without Borders

Ugandan Teachers fight for Living Wage | Teacher Solidarity - 0 views

  • Teachers in Uganda are striking for a salary increase which will provide them with a living wage Teachers in Uganda earn as little as $96 a month under conditions where inflation is running at 20+%. The teachers – who are members of the union Ugandan National Teachers Association (UNATU) are demanding a 100% rise. Teachers are among the worst paid government employees in the country – yet Yoweri Museveni – President of Uganda since 1986 – says that an increase for teachers is not a priority. Instead the government is prioritising infrastructure which will allow it to become one of the world’s top 50 oil producers.
  • Teachers have been subjected to harrassment, verbal abuse, arrests and forced apologies at the hands of the security services.
Teachers Without Borders

Vietnam demands English language teaching 'miracle' | Education | Guardian Weekly - 0 views

  • More than 80,000 English language teachers in Vietnam's state schools are expected to be confident, intermediate-level users of English, and to pass a test to prove it, as part of an ambitious initiative by the ministry of education to ensure that all young people leaving school by 2020 have a good grasp of the language.
  • But the initiative is worrying many teachers, who are uncertain about their future if they fail to achieve grades in tests such as Ielts and Toefl."All teachers in primary school feel very nervous," said Nguyen Thi La, 29, an English teacher at Kim Dong Primary School in Hanoi."It's difficult for teachers to pass this exam, especially those in rural provinces. B2 is a high score.""All we know is that if we pass we are OK. If we don't we can still continue teaching, then take another test, then if we fail that, we don't know."
  • "No teachers will be sacked if they are not qualified because we already know most of them are not qualified. No teachers will be left behind and the government will take care of them. But if the teachers don't want to improve, then parents will reject them because only qualified teachers will be able to run new training programmes."
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  • The state media recently reported that in the Mekong Delta's Ben Tre province, of 700 teachers who had been tested, only 61 reached the required score. In Hue, in central Vietnam, one in five scored B2 or higher when 500 primary and secondary teachers were screened with tests tailored by the British Council.
  • "B2 is achievable enough. The teachers I know want to improve their English but want their salaries to be higher so that they can have an incentive to try harder to meet the standard," said Tran Thi Qua, a teacher trainer from the education department in Hue.
  • A new languages-focused curriculum delivered by retrained teachers should be in place in 70% of grade-three classes by 2015, according to ministry plans, and available nationwide by 2019. English teaching hours are set to double and maths will be taught in a foreign language in 30% of high schools in major cities by 2015.
  • "The government needs to fund courses to help improve the quality of the teachers, and pay them more money, but I think if teachers don't want to improve, then they should change jobs," she said.
  • Rebecca Hales, a former senior ELT development manager at British Council Vietnam, said: "The ministry is taking a phased approach, which is commendable, but there are issues with supply and demand. They don't have the trained primary English teachers. The targets are completely unachievable at the moment."
  • "The teacher trainers we trained up are now at the mercy of the individual education departments. There's no evidence at this stage of a large-scale teacher training plan," Hales said.
  • "There are many challenges. We are dealing with everything, from training, salaries and policy, to promotion, how to train [teachers] then keep them in the system. I'm not sure if [Project 2020] will be successful. Other countries have spent billions on English language teaching in the private sector but still governments have been very unhappy with the outcomes."
Teachers Without Borders

Survey: Supportive leadership helps retain top teachers - washingtonpost.com - 0 views

  • A national survey of more than 40,000 public school teachers suggests that while higher salaries are far more likely than performance pay to help keep top talent in the classroom, supportive leadership trumps financial incentives.
  • To retain good teachers, 68 percent called supportive leadership "absolutely essential," 45 percent said the same of higher salaries and 8 percent listed performance pay.
  • Fifty-nine percent said establishing common standards across states would have a strong or very strong impact on achievement, and 73 percent said clearer academic standards would produce such benefits. But 69 percent said the rigor of their own state's standards was "about right," and teachers were nearly evenly split on whether their own state has "too many standards" or "the right amount."
Teachers Without Borders

Mexico's drug gangs aim at new target teachers - World AP - MiamiHerald.com - 1 views

  • Now as Christmas approaches, mobsters have chosen a new target, turning their sights on humble schoolteachers. Painted threats scrawled outside numerous public schools demand that teachers hand over their Christmas bonuses or face the possibility of an armed attack on the teachers - and even the children.
  • To make the point clear, assailants set fire to a federal preschool in the San Antonio district a week ago, leaving the director's office in smoldering ruins. Scribbled on the wall in gold paint was the reason: "For not paying."
  • Now with the targets being teachers, parents have pulled thousands of children from schools where heightened security already had turned them into seeming prisons, enclosed with coils of barbed wire atop concrete walls.
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  • "We are scared," admitted Maria de Jesus Casio, principal of the Ramon Lopez Velarde Elementary School. But she also said teachers don't want to pay. "Teachers don't have much money. The salaries are just enough for survival." Teachers in this city earn an average of $650 a month. Christmas bonuses vary but the average is about a month's pay.
  • "The educational system is under threat by criminal groups," Javier Gonzalez, the under secretary for education in northern Chihuahua state, said in an interview. "We're just praying to God that there never is an event of this nature."
  • At the pre-primary school hit by arson Dec. 5, director Norma Pena said her school had been sacked of anything valuable. "They constantly rob from us - the metal bars from the fence, the air conditioners, even the swing sets," Pena said. "The laws are so soft. The laws are no good. When they catch someone, they let them go right away. The criminals threaten the authorities."
  • "We feel the caring and love people have for our school. This is what keeps us going," Casio said. But the crime gangs are sapping hope. "They respect no one. What is there to rob in this school? And we teachers, with our salaries, have even less."
Teachers Without Borders

allAfrica.com: Sudan: Rumbek Teachers to Be Docked Wages After They Fail to Attend Trai... - 0 views

  • Rumbek — A one-month teacher training course organized by Save the Children in Rumbek, the capital of Lakes state in South Sudan, has been skipped by some of the teachers due to attend. At the start of the workshop on Wednesday at Riak-Dor primary school, only 45 of the 60 teachers expected to attend arrived for the first day of the training. The teachers are drawn from Rumbek East and Rumbek Central counties. Rumbek East county education director Abel Kook Thong threatened to withhold the February salaries of teachers who have not attended the training as a punishment. He said he was seeking permission to do so from the director general of Lakes state's education ministry.
  • He said the aim of the workshop is to "equip teachers with knowledge and skills" adding that the absent teachers are refusing to participate in efforts to fight against ignorance in the community. Kook encouraged the teachers attending the training saying teachers will play an important role in bringing development of South Sudan as a new nation.
  • In June South Sudan is expected to become independent after an overwhelming vote for secession in a referendum in January.
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  • Kook likened the teachers who did not attend to robbers, who just wanted to collect their salaries and were interested in equipping themselves with further knowledge. Adding that by not attending the teachers were preventing information being passed on to children.
Teachers Without Borders

Teachers Strike in Serbia - now Thousands Demonstrate | Teacher Solidarity - 0 views

  • Teachers announced a general strike in Serbia last week as thousands demonstrate against the government’s economic policies Teachers are demanding a 24.5% increase in their meagre salaries. At present the average teacher in Serbia earns 350 Euros a month. The education minister said that granting an increase would: ” jeopardise the country’s macroeconomic stability, and cause an increase in inflation.” 
Teachers Without Borders

Daily Nation: - News |Teachers' 20pc raise closes three-year deal - 0 views

  • It brings the salary of the lowest paid teacher in public schools to Sh13,700 a month while the highest paid teacher will get Sh120,270 minus allowances.But some teachers said the pay increase was far below the rise in cost of living.
  • Mary Rasul of Mama Ngina Girls Secondary in Mombasa, said she would only believe they would get a pay rise when she sees the money. “This can be mere public relations. Let’s wait and see if it will be reflected in our payslips,” she said.
Teachers Without Borders

Mexican Teachers Push Back Against Gangs' Extortion Attempt - NYTimes.com - 0 views

  • ACAPULCO, Mexico — The message is delivered by a phone call to the office of one school, a sheaf of photocopied papers dropped off at another, a banner hung outside a third.
  • The demand is the same: teachers have until Oct. 1 to start handing over half of their pay. If they do not, they risk their lives. Extortion is a booming industry in Mexico, with reported cases having almost tripled since 2004. To some analysts, it is an unintended consequence of the government’s strategy in the drug war: as the large cartels splinter, armies of street-level thugs schooled in threats and violence have brought their skills to new enterprises. But the threat to teachers here in this tarnished tourist resort has taken the practice to a new level. Since the anonymous threats began last month, when students returned to classes after summer break, hundreds of schools have shut down.
  • “We are all scared,” said a high school drawing teacher who would give her name only as Noemi. “We are targets because we have a salary that is a bit more stable than the rest.”
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  • State officials have tried to play down the school closings, which are concentrated in public schools in some of the city’s poorest neighborhoods. But after an estimated 7,000 teachers protested on Wednesday, the Guerrero State governor, Ángel Aguirre, met with teachers on Thursday, promising a host of new security measures, including increased police patrols and the installation of panic buttons, telephones and video cameras in every school.
  • “Extorting teachers is risky; it generates a great deal of social disgust,” said Raúl Benitez, a security specialist at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. “It’s just a stupidity.”
  • On the first day of school at La Patria es Primero Elementary School (which translates roughly as “Country First”) in the Zapata neighborhood, three men sauntered in pretending to be parents and then drew guns on the teachers, making off with money, school documents and a laptop belonging to a fifth-grade teacher who would give only his first name, Ricardo. The school’s payroll officer received a message demanding that she hand over information about teachers’ salaries and has left the city, Ricardo said. “It could just be low-level kids taking advantage,” he said, “but they are spreading a psychosis among the population.”
Teachers Without Borders

BBC News - Energy savings 'could pay for a teacher' - 0 views

  • Schools could save the equivalent of a teacher's salary by switching out the lights and taking energy saving measures, a charity says.
  • The Carbon Trust says UK secondary schools could save up to £21,500 in energy bills if they took measures. These include switching off lights and computers, turning heating down, installing insulation and more efficient lighting.
  • It says: "Simple measures such as switching off lights and installing more efficient heating could help the average secondary school save £21,500 in energy bills - almost equal to the annual salary of a newly qualified teacher."
Teachers Without Borders

BBC News - Raise teacher status to improve schools, says OECD - 0 views

  • Teaching must be made more attractive for the brightest students, says a report from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. Report author Andreas Schleicher says teachers need to be given "status, pay and professional autonomy". The international report identifies the quality of teachers as the key to raising education standards. The most successful systems, such as Finland and Singapore, recruit high-achieving students, says the report.
  • Mr Schleicher, the OECD's special adviser on education, argues in his report that if school systems want to be competitive they need to recruit and reward the right type of staff. He says that a modern economy needs teachers who are "high-level knowledge workers" - able to support the learning of children in a digital age.
  • "But people who see themselves as knowledge workers are not attracted by schools organised like an assembly line, with teachers working as interchangeable widgets in a bureaucratic command-and-control environment," says Mr Schleicher.
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  • In Finland, a high social status is attached to teaching, making it very competitive, with nine out of 10 applicants for teacher training being turned away. In Singapore, teachers are drawn from the top third of students and they are paid at levels competitive with other graduate careers. Across the OECD, teachers on average are paid less well than other graduate professions - receiving about 80% of the average for workers with degrees.
Teachers Without Borders

Reuters AlertNet - DRC: Where schools have flapping plastic walls - 0 views

  • KIWANJA, 19 July 2010 (IRIN) - It is a sunny day at the Mashango primary school in the Democratic Republic of Congo's (DRC's) North Kivu Province. That is good news for teacher Dusaba Mbomoya who is holding a geography exam under a roof filled with holes in a classroom where flapping pieces of plastic do duty as walls. Even the blackboard has holes large enough for students to peer through. "When it rains we allow the pupils to go back to their houses," said Mbomoya.
  • Most classrooms are dark and crumbling with limited teaching materials. With the government opting out, Save the Children estimates that parents are forced to finance 80-90 percent of all public education outside the capital Kinshasa, though under the DRC's 2006 constitution elementary education is supposed to be free. Teachers' salaries go unpaid which means parents must contribute to their wages via monthly school fees of around US$5 per pupil. Large families and an average monthly income of just $50 means such fees are entirely unaffordable for large swathes of the DRC population - with serious consequences. Estimates from Save the Children and others suggest nearly half of Congolese children, more than three million, are out of school and one in three have never stepped in the classroom.
  • Save the Children's research shows that teachers' pay is so low and so irregular that many take on other jobs, such as farming, taking them away from their classrooms and students. The situation is particularly bad in North Kivu where hundreds of thousands have been uprooted by years of war. Some like Laurent Rumvu live in camps for the internally displaced. None of his five school-aged children are in regular education.
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  • Ransacked Schools in the area were closed for several months in late 2008 and early 2009 when fighting between rebel soldiers in the National Congress for the Defence of the People (CNDP - now a political party) and the DRC army brought chaos to North Kivu. Children were forcibly recruited from schools by militia groups and the army and students and teachers were shot and abducted, according to the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF). Schools were ransacked and many were occupied by either soldiers or IDPs.
  • After the war, he said 120 fewer pupils returned to classes. At Kasasa, CNDP soldiers occupied the school for several weeks, taking books and causing damage. Some pupils were killed during the fighting, and Nkunda said others were traumatized. "Of course the war has had an effect," he said. "Imagine going to school after your parents have been killed." Getting displaced children back in school is a priority for international agencies including the Norwegian Refugee Council.
  • "Education is extremely important to the future of Congo," said Mondlane. "With large numbers of displaced children it is extremely important to invest in education in this humanitarian crisis." "Bad government" Kasasa student Shirambere Tibari Menya, 22, lost four years of his schooling to war. Most recently, he fled to Uganda during the fighting in 2008 and is now close to finishing secondary school. But one obstacle remains - a one-off series of final exams which all DRC pupils must take before graduation. Tibari is confident he will pass and would like to go on to study medicine but says his family does not have the $12 he must pay to take the tests. "I don't accept that I'm going to lose another year, but you can see that we are studying in bad conditions," he said. "For our parents the main activity is to go to the fields, but they are raped and attacked so we have the problem of food and no money. "I blame the government. We are in a bad country with a bad government."
Teachers Without Borders

Education Week: U.S. Teachers More Interested in Reform Than Money - 0 views

  • U.S. teachers are more interested in school reform and student achievement than their paychecks, according to a massive new survey. The survey of 40,090 K-12 teachers — including 15,038 by telephone — was likely the largest national survey of teachers ever completed and includes the opinions of teachers in every grade, in every state and across the demographic spectrum.
  • Teachers don't want to see their students judged on the results of one test and they also want their own performances graded on multiple measures.
  • Most value non-monetary rewards, such as time to collaborate with other teachers and a supportive school leadership, over higher salaries. Only 28 percent felt performance pay would have a strong impact and 30 percent felt performance pay would have no impact at all.
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  • They see themselves as a bridge between school and home and an important part of the effort to raise student achievement.
  • For example, only 6 percent of teachers surveyed said graduating all students with a high school diploma was one of the most important goals of schools and teaching, while 71 percent said one of the most important goals was to prepare all students for careers in the 21st century.
  • Fewer were in favor of having common academic tests in every state, which would presumably be based on the common standards, but more than half said common tests were a good idea.
  • But instead of yearly tests, they want to see formative, ongoing assessments in class to help them understand how much their students are learning over time.
Teachers Without Borders

Zimbabwe: Deteriorating education system and political tensions have led to severe teac... - 1 views

  • Zimbabwe: Deteriorating education system and political tensions have led to severe teacher shortage
  • Incentives that parents can pay to improve teachers’ salaries have become one of the most controversial issues facing the education unions of Zimbabwe. It is dividing teachers and has incapacitated access to education by the most vulnerable groups of our society, said ZIMTA President Tendai Chikowore in her opening address.
  • ZIMTA estimates that in the past decade more than 20,000 teachers have left the country. In 2009, according to Chikowore, 35% of the teacher posts in primary education and 33% in secondary education were vacant.She noted that “teachers' morale sank to its lowest ebb since independence” and that any form of support for the reconstruction of Zimbabwe should recognize the need for support to teachers.
Teachers Without Borders

allAfrica.com: Zimbabwe: Gloom Looms in Education Sector - 0 views

  • Legislators have predicted a catastrophic year epitomised by poor pass rates and falling standards in the education sector ahead of next Tuesday's official schools opening day as a result of poor funding.
  • "The ministry will have to drastically revise downwards its stated objectives for 2011 as reflected in the blue book. The impact of the downward revision will be catastrophic. The ministry envisages poor pass rates, low quality education, lack of or no supervision of the education delivery mechanism, inadequate teaching materials and the continual mushrooming of illegal schools operating on the sidelines of conventional schools," reads part of the Parliamentary report.
  • the committee said the funds were inadequate to address the plight of teachers whose salaries are currently being topped-up through a controversial teacher incentive scheme. The budget was also said to have not prioritised secondary education.
Teachers Without Borders

University graduates launch 'Teach for Pakistan' project - 0 views

  • KARACHI: Idealism need not fight capitalism because they can work in harmony, is the message of Khadija Bakhtiar, whose ‘Teach for Pakistan’ project aims to place 40 teachers in 20 under-resourced primary and secondary schools in Karachi this year and the next.
  • Bakhtiar was inspired by fellow students who had worked with Teach for America, a programme that tries to end educational inequity by sending top university graduates to teach in poor neighbourhoods for two years.
  • Unesco’s senior national specialist for education, Arshad Saeed Khan, has said that the average Pakistani spends a mere 5.7 years in school.
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  • Teach for Pakistan has mirrored the American model as it hopes to become a “nationwide movement” that can address the education crisis in the country. “Teach for Pakistan” defies the concept of traditional charity because the programme pays a competitive salary and has a high, meaningful impact on the life of the teacher and student simultaneously
Teachers Without Borders

Pakistan Teachers on Indefinite Strike | Teacher Solidarity - 0 views

  • Federal Directorate teachers in Pakistan are on indefinite strike since Thursday. The teachers are members of the Federal Government Teachers Association (FGTA) and are demanding that salary increases which have been promised to them since last November be paid.
Teachers Without Borders

allAfrica.com: Uganda: Doom Looms As Govt Admits Failures in Teaching Profession - 0 views

  • Education experts are warning that the absorption of poor academic performers for training as teachers is a recipe for disaster for Uganda's future.
  • Our analysis of scores of prospective new entrants at Primary Teachers' Colleges across the country reveals that most of those admitted obtained low grades in the 2010 O-level examinations, raising questions about their academic competence.
  • "It is a challenge. I would think that teaching should take the cream of the students but people don't want to join because the profession is looked at as an area for low [academic] performers," said Ms Margaret Rwabushaija, the Uganda National Teachers' Union (UNATU) chairperson.
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  • Concerns about low remuneration and declining social status of teachers in the country, contrasting their privileged and high esteem in the past, has forced bright students to shun the profession, observers say.
  • Until this financial year, a primary teacher earned a monthly salary of Shs200,000 - without allowance - although that gross pay has now marginally increased to Shs260,000.
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    Our analysis of scores of prospective new entrants at Primary Teachers' Colleges across the country reveals that most of those admitted obtained low grades in the 2010 O-level examinations, raising questions about their academic competence.
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