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"id": 225490,
"url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/225490/?format=api",
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"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Dr. Mwiria",
"speaker_title": "The Assistant Minister for Education",
"speaker": {
"id": 190,
"legal_name": "Valerian Kilemi Mwiria",
"slug": "kilemi-mwiria"
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"content": " Thank you, Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, for giving me this opportunity. I would like to say, at the very outset, that obviously, we all support this Motion. I would like to explain some of the circumstances that have led to our current situation, beginning with the fact that the current ceiling of 250,000 teachers that we employ was set up in 1997. It was not anything to do with the structural adjustment programmes, like I also used to think, but it has more to do with the enrolments at the time in terms of how many children were enroled in primary and secondary schools. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, that number was okay then up to 1997, but there have been major changes, especially since 2003. We have more than 25 per cent increase in primary and secondary schools. We have already been told about how the number increased by 1.5 million in primary schools alone; because of the many reforms that we are undertaking, including expanding secondary school opportunities, by introducing day schools and day streams as well as expansion of the private sector in education, support for informal schools and so on. The secondary school system itself has expanded to the point where now, instead of a transition rate of only 47 per cent, we have up to 60 per cent transition from primary to secondary school, thereby, again, increasing the demand for teachers. So, it is true that the increase in student numbers in both primary and secondary schools has called for proportionate increases in the number of teachers that we recruit. However, in addition to those conditions, there have been other factors that have intensified the problem, including that of teachers being employed by other Ministries due to the new opportunities that keep on coming up. April 18, 2007 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES 717 There are also those teachers taking up teaching jobs in other countries. Again, it is difficult for us to say that we will prevent them from going to other countries if we cannot employ all of them. If you get a job, say in Sudan or Rwanda, it is not fair for us to ask you to just stay here, or for us to blame the Government for allowing that exodus when we are not able to accommodate all of them. Other challenges relate to death because of various diseases, including the HIV/AIDS, teachers resigning as well as retiring because of the age limit. I support Dr. Kibunguchy in saying that we do not need to go outside the country to recruit teachers who have retired, because, even in other countries, people retire for the same reasons as we ask civil servants to retire. We require them to retire to allow other people to get employed, especially at this time when we have these numbers. In view of that, therefore, I would like to say that, as a Ministry, we have supported recruitment of teachers. We have stated this publicly many times before. We have indicated on numerous occasions that we are negotiating with the Treasury. We have even spoken of the fact that we have a Cabinet Paper that has already been prepared, illustrating the extent to which there is a serious problem and why we need to recruit more teachers. We have also said that much will depend, therefore, on how well we are doing as an economy, and how much the Treasury is going to allocate us. We hope that, in keeping with the request from Members of Parliament, the next Budget will enable us to recruit more teachers than we have been able to recruit in the last four years. We have only been replacing those whom we have lost through natural attrition. So, we are pushing very much for that and, maybe, we will be pleasantly surprised, depending on how much we will be able to get to be able to go beyond the limit we have operated in, in the last few years."
}