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profession.
Ministry of Education, Sport, Arts and Culture officials confirmed the latest development last Friday.

The vacant posts are increasing despite Government granting amnesty to teachers who left the country at the height of the economic meltdown.
Principal director for finance, administration and human resources in the Ministry of Education, Sport, Arts and Culture, Mrs Sibonginkosi Mutasa, last Friday said out of the 111 000 teaching posts in the country, 96 000 were filled by qualified teachers.

The remaining 15 000 post are vacant and unqualified teachers are also shunning the offers. This has negatively affected the country’s pass rates, sources have revealed.

The situation is particularly bad in the rural areas where people with less than four Ordinary Level passes are being allowed to take up secondary school classes.

Parents in rural areas are unable to pay attractive incentives unlike their counterparts in urban areas.
At some rural schools, a teacher is forced to take up more than four subjects to cover up for the shortage.

Education, Sport, Arts and Culture Deputy Minister Lazarus Dokora attributed the shortage to brain drain.
He said teacher training colleges, which were producing 5 000 teachers annually, were also failing to meet their target as the number of pupils starting school was increa-sing.

“The sector is in dire need of qualified teachers. The optimistic view that some teachers would come back has no relationship to reality, rendering the amnesty useless.
“Brain drain has wreaked havoc in the sector. New graduates are leaving for foreign lands and others are joining other sectors.

“The number of graduates is too low compared to pupils starting school. We receive just above 5 000 teachers each year and with this trend continuing, a perfect balance will not be achievable,” he said.
He said natural attrition factors such as death and retirement also contributed to the shortfall.

Government, in a bid to track down thousands of educators who left the profession to seek greener pastures in foreign lands, decided to accept back those willing to rejoin the ministry.
However, most teachers have been driven away by low remuneration and frustrating bureaucracy.

Secretary for Higher and Tertiary Education Dr Washington Mbizvo confirmed that 15 primary and secondary teacher training colleges in the country were producing 5 000 teachers every year.
“That is our production in the past two years. It was at 2 500 but in the past two years things have improved and we are hoping the situation will continue to improve,” he said.

However, this is not enough to cater for the over 5 500 primary and 1 600 secondary schools in the country whose enrolment continues to increase every term as the population grows.