By Neo Kolane
Different school board members are furious regarding the circular making rounds about the termination of support for new teachers’ appointments in private and independent schools.
A circular from the ministry of education and training dated January 25 2023 stated that due to financial challenges the country is currently facing, the ministry of education and training will no longer be able to support new teacher’s appointments in private and independent schools.
Iketsetseng Community English Medium School has nine teachers whose monthly salaries are paid from the government coffers.
During theReporter’s visit to the school this week, the chairman of the school board Teboho Makoanyane explained that the school was taken aback by the government’s decision to cease paying teachers tutoring in such schools’ monthly salaries.
Makoanyane said the results of the termination are going to affect parents as they will be forced to dig deep into their pockets to fund the teachers’ payroll. This, it has been argued by Makoanyane, will have adverse impact on schools which now have to increase fees to cater for the teachers’ salaries.
He added that the roll of students will decrease when the fees increase.
“The ministry should have consulted with schools before finalising the termination of such support,” Makoanyane said.
The president of Lesotho Schools’ Principals Association (LESPA) Mathafeng Moteuli said the bottom line is that private schools had teachers who were being paid by the government.
Moteuli said it has been a long thing, since 1995 and 2004 since a white paper was drafted and passed by government in a bid to take over running of private and church schools as the state administration bore a burden of paying teachers’ salaries.
“The budget as we speak over for years now is not increasing in the ministry making the ministry suffer yet those schools (private) have teachers being paid by the government although they are only to be paid if placed in public or community schools.
“We have a crisis of hiring principals which is not budgeted. It is a good move for us as LESPA, because we lament a desperate shortage of teachers in some of our schools,” Moteuli said.
The secretary general of Lesotho Association of Teachers Letsatsi Ntsibolane said that his association does not support the privatization of education but rather that there should be quality education that is funded by the government.
Ntsibolane said the important thing is that every Mosotho child needs to be taught well, when the ministry writes such a circular, the association gets ashamed and feels the quality of education is being reduced.
“We feel that those teachers are being pulled away from those schools and that is going to result in the owners of the schools increasing school fees to be able to hire more teachers,” Ntsibolane said.
The principal secretary of basic education Dr Dira Khama emphasized that the ministry will no longer finance private and independent schools’ teachers.
Khama said that education is important and the ministry supports, we used to provide teachers to private and independent schools like Leribe, Mohale’s Hoek English Medium high schools and Phethahatso English Medium Primary School.
