Oarabile Mosikare
22 August 2008
Palapye — A section of teachers attending a conference broke into an impromptu celebration on hearing news that they were being considered for scarce skills allowances.
The Director of Teaching Service Management (TSM), Opelo Makhandela, broke the news that scarce skills allowances for Mathematics and Science teachers were on the cards when he addressed delegates to the Botswana Teachers' Union's (BTU) secondary and tertiary sectors' annual conference in Palapye last week.
He said the Ministry of Education now thought a case could be made for Mathematics and Science teachers. Although he said he believed a case could also be made for Chemistry teachers, there were no vacancies (at present). Makhandela said he understood scarce skills to apply to areas where there was not enough manpower.
On further training for teachers, he said some school heads were doing their training in non-managerial courses. "I had to move them to the Institute of Development Management (IDM)," he said. He also mentioned the structure of Organisation and Methods (O&M), saying he was not sufficiently informed on the issue, except that it was continuing; following local government borders, each region would have its own director.
"There will be 14 regions all headed at regional level," Makhandela said. "Promotions, hiring, demotions and training will be done at that level. All we are trying to do is work on the structures to regionalise those issues. By April 2009, all these things will be implemented." Makhandela said another issue that gave him "a headache" was the one concerning boarding school allowance. He suggested that since there were senior teachers and guidance and counselling teachers who were not teaching, perhaps they should be assigned those duties.
Makhandela acknowledged the issue as "a thorny one" because teachers at boarding schools complained that they work longer hours than their counterparts at day schools.
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