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| Wednesday, 4 August 2004 |
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by Manjula Fernando The Education Ministry will introduce a special allowance for teachers serving in disadvantaged and rural areas for long periods in line with a major program expected to rectify the teacher shortage in provincial and national schools. An Education Ministry spokesperson said the program, directly supervised by President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga who is the Minister for Education, also proposes to streamline teacher transfers. "The aim is to fill all vacancies in schools by expediting outstanding transfers and posting newly passed out teachers from National Education Colleges and new graduate-recruits in an equitable manner," she said. "The President has instructed the Ministry to complete filling all vacancies for teachers, giving emphasis for national schools and schools being developed under the Navodya project before December 31 this year." "The program will ensure that teacher transfers scheduled to be completed before the end of this year, are effected with transparency and in an equitable manner as per needs of the teachers as well as the school," the spokesperson said. The teacher shortage is said to be one of the major setbacks for effective implementation of education reforms program initiated in 1998. In addition to the special allowance, a string of special welfare incentives is to follow suit as a boon for long serving teachers in disadvantaged and rural areas. The spokesperson said: "We have designed a structured plan to post the newly passed out over 2600 trained teachers from the National Education Colleges on a systematic manner, taking into account needs of individual schools." Adding that the program proposes to accommodate graduates enlisted under the Government's graduate employment scheme, she said the graduates will undergo a comprehensive training by the National Institute of Education on a specialised field before their postings. If the existing cadres are not adequate, the Ministry has received approval to recruit new teachers for Tamil, English, Maths, Science and IT. There are over 190,000 teachers in nearly 10,000 State schools islandwide. |
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