Teaching Service Chairman appeals for bigger education budget

The Chairman of the Vanuatu Teaching Service Commission (TSC), Derek Alexander, has confirmed that there are people who are occupying vacancies in senior secondary schools of the country who have not yet received their appointments or paid their salaries.

He says since the start of the school year in February, these people, who are university graduates and holders of bachelors’ degrees, are teaching special subjects such as biology, chemistry, physics, maths calculus, maths statistics, accounting and economics.

He says these teachers are found in almost all the senior streams including Malapoa College, Tafea Secondary School, Saint Patrick’s College, Rensari and Central School which started offering Year 12 and Year 13 levels this year.

“I sympathize with these people. I can confirm they have not received their appointments or paid the salary for their work. It all boils down to the Government,” he laments the situation.

He says the situation is the result of the decisions of Government’s Ministerial Budget Committee which decides the final ministerial budget for the new year before submissions go to Parliament for approval.

He points out that the annual population growth rate is 2.84%. But the Ministry of Education’s annual budget has remained the same at Vt4.1 billion for the last five years.

“Every year the Ministry of Education submits New Policy Proposals (NPP) based on teacher vacancies in primary to secondary schools. But somehow the MBC has not been considering these submissions. I don’t know why.”

The Teaching Service Chairman explained that the TSC has engaged these people in the Senior Secondary to teach the specialized subjects in Years 12 and 13 for students in their exam year. He agreed that if these teachers decided to walk off the job there would be uproar among parents who have paid the schools fees for their children who deserved the education. Hence, he said the Government needed to think seriously about increasing the education budget.

Alexander has come out to make this clarification following a letter in the Daily Post’s Letter to the Editor column highlighting the situation of the teachers concerned.

Having made the clarifications, the TSC Chairman announced that the Commission would be meeting next week to sort out the problem for those people in Senior Secondary Schools, adding that the Government has agreed to find the money to settle the outstanding matter.

“These teachers are getting some money from the schools they are in and when their appointments are made official their pay will be regularized by the administration of those schools,” he added.

But he admits the same situation also exists in the Junior Secondary Schools and this will not be resolved yet until funding issues are resolved.

The Teaching Service Commission is Government’s largest employer, looking after a total of 3,844 teachers throughout the country, from primary through secondary schools, in both the French and English streams.