The Ministry of Education and Sports has dropped over 30,000 teachers in the ongoing verification and registration exercise.
According to the Ministry, some of the teachers had forged academic papers and appointment letters.
Dr. Jane Egau Okou, the Commissioner in charge of Teacher Education and Instruction, says affected persons are not allowed to teach in any school, adding that relevant authorities have been notified.
“Using our teacher management system, we are trying to weed out the unqualified teachers. So far, over 30,000 teachers across the country have been dropped. We hope that by December, everyone would have been registered. When we do that, we shall know the qualified teachers we have, then we shall fill the gap. Because there are many qualified teachers out there who do not have access to the payroll.”
Dr. Egau says it has taken them along time to weed out such teachers because most of the affected are primary school teachers hired by District Service Commissions.
“We have known that they are there but we have not been able to get them before. This is one of the reasons we put in place the teacher registration exercise. We wanted to weed out these ghost teachers who are everywhere.”
According to Dr. Egau, unqualified teachers are one of the reasons that Uganda still registers low learning outcomes.
“Teaching is not for anyone. Teachers are trained to make learning plans, to determine whether learners are learning and even how to put issue across. It’s not a matter of standing in front of class room and talking. These fake teachers are one of the reasons we have low learning outcomes,” she said.
Alex Kakooza, the Education Ministry Permanent Secretary, says unqualified teachers are one of the challenges the education sector faces. “We face a challenge of not having qualified teachers not just in primary schools but even in ECD centers. This is a serious issue that we trying to solve as a ministry,” he observed.
The teacher registration and verification exercise is expected to end in December 2019. So far, 80,000 teachers have registered. Dr. Tony Mukasa Lusambu, the Commissioner for Basic Education at the Education ministry, says teachers should go ahead and register.
“I hereby encourage our teachers to register as first as possible. We want every qualified teacher registered by December. That is the time we resume the scheme of service, ensuring that we are rewarding only those teachers who went through training.”
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