KUCHING: The shortage of teachers in Sarawak is mainly due to the lack of candidates from the Institutes of Teacher Education and subject-teacher mismatch.
President of the Association of Boards of Management for Aided Chinese Primary Schools in Kuching, Samarahan and Serian Divisions, Datuk Jonathan Chai said the subjects most affected by the subject-teacher mismatch include English, Bahasa Melayu and Special Education.
He said the Education Ministry should be committed to make intentional efforts to promote and encourage the enrolment into the Teachers Training Colleges or Institutes of Teacher Education by the school leavers.
In fact, he said, the government should emulate some developed countries to reserve the Bachelor of Education courses in the government funded universities to top scholars in the public examinations to ensure that there are good numbers of elites trained as teachers for the betterment of the educational development in this country.
“But, I think the problem of shortage of teachers in the Chinese vernacular schools, for instance, Sekolah Jenis Kebangsaan (SJK) Chung Hua in Sarawak is not as acute when compared to the government schools of other streams, especially after the implementation of the combined classes (Kelas Bercantum) in the SKM ( Sekolah Kurang Murid) with the excess teachers being transferred away to fill up the vacancies in various SJK Chung Hua,” he told New Sarawak Tribune.
Chai said shortage of teachers could also be due to an array of unforeseen circumstances such as optional retirement, death, half-pay and no-pay leave exceeding one year, courses exceeding one year, discontinued services and resignations.
Even then, the ministry should have a good grip of the number of vacancies of teachers which are required to be filled from time to time and there’s no excuse to have the problem unresolved for such a long time and continued to have such acute shortage which runs into thousands.
“If the problem is not settled sooner, the rights and opportunities of receiving quality education of many students especially those in the rural and interior areas would be unreasonably deprived of,” he said.
Last year, it was reported that Sarawak faced a shortage of 3,385 teachers, however, the number has increased to 5,037 as of January this year. This was despite the fact that 1,674 teachers have been posted to Sarawak since December.
The Education Ministry revealed last year that national schools in four states including Sarawak were experiencing an alarmingly low supply of teachers.
To address the teacher shortage in these national schools, Chai said the Education Ministry had announced a special call for teachers and there was a large-scale one-time recruitment of 18,702 teachers took place last July so that the newly recruited teachers could begin their placements in October 2021.
“But unfortunately, the plan didn’t go all well as I would have anticipated. Of the total of applicants, only 13,760 were successful in the interviews conducted by the Education Service Commission.”
“From that figure, it is understandable that our schools will continue to struggle with the problem of shortage of teachers, especially those schools in the rural and remote interior areas where certain assigned teachers are reluctant to report for duty,” he added.
