Teacher Recruitment in Zambia 2022
Minister of Education Douglas Syakalima has announced that the advertisement for the recruitment of a record 30,000 teachers will be placed in the electronic and print media on 5th,6th and 7th April 2022.
In a ministerial statement to parliament on the recruitment of teachers, Mr Syakalima said that Zambia Postal Services Corporation (ZAMPOST). will commence receiving and delivering applications in all districts by 5th April 2022 and conclude delivery by 15th April 2022.
Mr Syakalima said that the recruitment of process has been decentralized to the district level in line with government policy on decentralization and that applicants will therefore be required to apply to the district education board secretaries’ offices in the districts where they wish to be employed through the ZAMPOST.
Mr Syakalima said that upon receipt of the application, ZAMPOST will send an SMS notification to the applicant as proof of receipt, adding that in order to allow for transparency, ZAMPOST will capture all applications received and create a database, explaining that the database and the applications will be delivered to the district human resources management committees at the respective districts who will open and undertake the selection process.
Mr Syakalima said that the provincial consolidation and validation committees will review the submission from the districts and submit reports to the national consolidation committee, before the Teaching service commission reviews and approves the consolidated and validated lists of selected candidates from 9th to 15th May 2022, stating that that district deployment of officers to respective schools will be conducted between 13th to 30th June,2022.
Meanwhile, the Zambia National Education Coalition (ZANEC) has welcomed the progress the government, through the Teaching Service Commission, has made towards the recruitment of 30,000 teachers provided for in the 2022 education budget.
Coalition Executive Director George Hamusunga said that the announcement by the government that the recruitment process will be decentralized gives the coalition confidence that the process will be completed in good time.
Mr. Hamusunga is also happy with the measures that the government has put in place to ensure the recruitment process is transparent and free of corruption by involving institutions such as ZAMPOST for receiving applications, the Zambia Police, Anti-Corruption Commission and Drug Enforcement Commission to provide oversight in the recruitment process.
Mr. Hamusunga said that this is very important because previous efforts to decentralize the teacher recruitment exercise to district level have been unsuccessful and that the decentralized recruitment of teachers is the hallmark of teacher retention in the schools.
Mr. Hamusunga added that that teachers must be recruited and deployed to schools that are as close to their place of residency as possible to mitigate against the prevailing housing crisis for teachers which encourages the migration of teachers deployed in rural areas back to urban areas.
And Mr. Hamusunga is therefore urging the Teaching Service Commission to consider the need to bridge the current huge gap for Science, Technology Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) teachers which is affecting performance in these subjects as evidenced from the 2021 grade 12 results.