Al-Ahram Weekly 28 Oct. - 3 Nov. 1999 Issue No. 453
Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875

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Lessons in recruitment

By Mariz Tadros

The Ministry of Education's announcement that there is a shortage of teachers can have surprised few. Minister of Education Hussein Bahaeddin has, after all, been at pains for some time now to stress that the government is intent on rectifying shortages of not only classrooms and equipment, but of schools themselves. This week, however, he announced that the ministry is desperately short of teachers, some 50,000 of them.

Competitions, the minister announced, will be held at the municipal level to recruit new teachers. And while Ragab Sharaby, first under-secretary of the minister of education, is keen to stress that the shortage has not yet "reached crisis point", the ministry has nonetheless adopted a number of schemes in an attempt to overcome the problem, including reemploying retired teachers and supervisors on a part time or casual basis and encouraging teachers to work overtime to ensure all lessons are covered.

Sharaby blamed the shortage of teachers partly on limited recruitment last year. "We had made a request to the cabinet to allow us to recruit 90,000 teachers, they agreed to 50,000," he explained. A nationwide competition was held to select suitable applicants. But the ministry did not even get the 50,000 it had been allocated. Only half the number of teachers whose applications were accepted were taken on board. According to Sharaby, the other half would not accept five-year fixed postings in named governorates.

In addition, the competition itself became a bone of contention between the ministry and teaching college graduates, who believe they were not given priority in the selection process, losing out to non-qualified applicants. Sharaby insists, though, that graduates of teaching college were given a fair chance, only they refused assignments to those governorates where the need is most.

The shortage of teachers, according to the first under-secretary, is in any case restricted to only a few specialisations, most noticeably home economics, sports, arts and music. "They can find more profitable employment elsewhere, many of them take up well paying jobs in the Gulf countries for example", he said. He denied that any correlation existed between the shortages in such specialisations and their prospects for attracting lucrative private lessons.

Not so, protested Manal Dawood, a former Arabic language and religion teacher at a government school. The reason why there is a shortage of teachers is because the Ministry of Education has done very little to make teaching an attractive career for new graduates. "The idea that teachers are flocking to the Gulf where they are paid better is far-fetched. Employment opportunities in the Gulf are few and far between these days." But, she argued, earning potential is a determining factor, only not in the way the ministry thinks. "You can make a lot of money in a short time by giving private lessons. And, of course, in specialisations like art and sports where pupils don't take private lessons, there is going to be a shortage of teachers."

Other graduates, Dawood believes, look for jobs that pay more and demand less effort.

Is it not just a question of money, then? Dawood thinks not. Teaching, as a profession, has, she believes, lost all status. "The idea that teachers build new generations and have a sacred role to play is no longer believed, and with it any respect for teachers has disappeared," she suggests. Is it any wonder, then, she asserts, that teachers bridle at a five-year exile to some distant school. "And all this is coupled with the fact that geographical assignments are not always governed by fair criteria," she further claims.

Educationalists disagree on the reasons for the shortage. Aida Abu Ghareeb, professor at the National Centre for Education Studies, argues that the ministry is obliged to accept applicants for teaching positions who are not graduates of teaching schools because teaching schools are not graduating enough specialist teachers in particular subjects. She is also convinced that one of the principal reasons why the supply of teachers is failing to meet demands is because of longer registers as the government strives to attain the goal of universal primary enrollment. "The Ministry of Education's decision to re-introduce 6th grade primary last June will also have increased the demand for teachers this year," she added.

But the crux of the matter, according to Fouad Abu Hatab, child psychologist and educationalist, is a lack of co-ordination and planning.

"We have a surplus in some specialisations and a shortage in others. We have no clear picture of what our needs are. Plans should be determined not by the overall national picture but by the demand and supply situation in each governorate. Regional universities need to plan according to the needs of their own governorate. And planning must look ahead, to needs in four years time. At the moment we face the situation where one year the ministry announces there is a demand for mathematics teachers, undergraduates then go ahead and specialise in that, but by the time they graduate there is no longer a demand for their specialisation."

Abu Hateb is also anxious about how this year's competition will be run. He believes that for the ministry to take on applicants who are not graduates of teaching school, as it did last year, does the profession a great disservice.

"To become a doctor you need to be a graduate of medicine, to become an engineer you need to be a graduate of engineering. But teaching? The ministry just accepts graduates from other faculties like commerce and science while at the same time those trained to teach are excluded."

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