TEACHERS and Primary and Secondary Education minister Evelyn Ndlovu will today meet in Harare under the cloud of threats to boycott public school examinations that are scheduled to begin today.
Teachers have registered their displeasure over disparities
in salaries with other government workers, among several other issues about
their conditions of service.
Progressive Teachers Union of Zimbabwe president Takavafira
Zhou confirmed the meeting yesterday, saying it would include government and
other stakeholders in the educations sector.
Zhou said it would discuss several issues, including that
of teachers threatening to boycott invigilation of the Zimbabwe Schools
Examination Council (Zimsec) “O” and “A” Level examinations if they were not
paid for the services.
“It’s a final meeting that would apprise the minister of an
array of challenges affecting teachers such as pathetic salaries and the need
to restore the purchasing power parity of teachers’ salaries to the pre-October
2018 position of an average of US$540,” Zhou told NewsDay yesterday.
“While this is a sole responsibility of the Public Service
Commission (PSC), the line ministry needs apprisal so that it can inform the
PSC, Cabinet and Treasury to address the issue as a matter of urgency.
“The issue of contract/payment for invigilation will be
discussed. The current united front position of teachers is that no contractual
agreement/payment, no Invigilation unless Zimsec is brought to pay teachers for
the invigilation of public examination under its auspices, and teachers will
not invigilate such examinations,” Zhou said.
Zimbabwe Teachers Association chief executive Sifiso Ndlovu
said the issue of boycotting of Zimsec examinations would come up for
discussion, among several other issues affecting teachers. But he said the
decision to boycott would be up to individual teachers to make.
“To us, the contracts have to do with individual teachers,
but at the moment, what we are engaged with is the discussion on the issue of
examination management and related allowances. We are not going to look at
invigilation only,” Ndlovu said.
“We are looking at all various issues. The new curriculum
is dictating that there be continuous assessment, which then makes examinations
only a component of 30%, and with that, it means every teacher, who has been
involved, is an examiner and in that instance, we are introducing a new
paradigm, where we are asking the authorities now to introduce a policy that
recognises the new paradigm that will remunerate all those involved in all
those activities.
“That level of engagement will see us tomorrow (today)
engaging the ministry together with other stakeholders to concretise them on
that. Our position has always been that we want teachers paid for invigilation,
but we have not yet said we are going to boycott invigilation.”
He said during today’s meeting, teachers would make
appropriate claims against government.
“The boycott position has not been communicated, and it
will come to that if we have challenges along the way. At the moment, let us
cross that bridge when we see it,” Ndlovu said.
Smaller unions like the Amalgamated Rural Teachers’ Union
of Zimbabwe have already made their position clear that their members will
boycott invigilating the examinations as long as there was no written agreement
to pay them for the services.
Primary and Secondary Education ministry spokesperson
Taungana Ndoro last week made it clear that if teachers boycotted invigilation
of examinations, government “will use anyone” to invigilate them.
Ndoro also said there were several non-unionised teachers
that could invigilate for free.
Last year, government used school ancillary staff and
villagers to invigilate the examinations after teachers boycotted. Newsday
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