Lusaka — "Life in the rural areas is unbearable, and teachers are not to blame for their refusal to take up rural posting.

It is unfair for government to post young teachers to hard-to-reach rural areas," said Freddie Chongo (25), a primary school teacher in Mumbwa District, some 170 kilometres west of Zambia's capital Lusaka.

Zambia released its third Millennium Development Goal Progress Report in June this year. The report was optimistic that the country is on course to achieve of all the MDGs, including goal number two, "Ensuring that by 2015 children everywhere, boys and girls alike will be able to complete a full course of primary schooling."

Aeneas Chuma, Resident Representative of Zambia for the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) explains that positive improvements have been recorded in the country in recent years. "(The) proportion of grade one pupils reaching grade seven rose from 64 percent in 2000 to 83 percent in 2006. This is as a result of good education policies."

Government has reformed the sector with measures such as the introduction of free primary education policy and the decentralization system -- the formation of school boards that empower school managers to make decisions on how to spend the funds allocated to them from government.

However, while the Zambian government is providing better access to basic education, a lot is yet to be done in terms of improving the quality of education and conditions of service for school teachers, especially in rural schools.

But the Progress Report states that Zambia's rural schools -- like in many other African countries -- are faced with an acute shortage of teachers and teaching materials.

The distribution of textbooks and other materials is hampered by the difficulty of access those areas where they are most needed. In some of the same rural areas, children are unable to attend school regularly because of the long distances they must travel daily.

Pupil-teacher ratios as high as 60 students to one teacher have been recorded in some rural schools. This is largely as a result of teachers' refusal to go to rural posting.

In this year's national budget, government allocated 15 percent to the education sector as a way of improving the education standard in the country. This will include the recruitment of 5,000 school teachers.

But newly graduating teachers from government teachers' schools that are posted to rural areas are refusing their job appointments, despite having signed Teacher Service Forms (TSF) that state that they are willing to work anywhere in the country where their services are required.

But the TSF is not a legally binding contract at this point. Many teachers are opting for better-paying private institutions in cities and towns after completing training at government's expense in public schools.

"Many will agree with me that the most important thing in education is the interaction between a motivated, well-paid, happy teacher and a student. So government should first improve dilapidated infrastructure in those rural schools before forcing teachers to go and work there," Chongo told IPS in an interview in Lusaka.

Zambia National Union of Teachers spokesperson Joel Kamoko notes that teachers are usually only willing to be posted to teach in city schools. "It is unfortunate that some teachers are looking for jobs with preferred places to work from, like in towns and cities instead of following what they signed upon completion of their course," he said.

Currently, the ministry of education is working on making the Teacher Service Form a legally-binding document, to give government more leverage in sending graduating teachers to the small districts and rural schools where they are so badly needed.