100 877 Teachers have applied to be recruited against the 30,000 teachers to be recruited in the ongoing teachers’ recruitment exercise.
Delivering a ministerial statement in parliament this afternoon Minister of Education Douglas Syakalima revealed that the central province received the highest number of applications with 17,513 followed by Copperbelt with 14,114.
Mr Syakalima said Muchinga and Lusaka received the lowest number of applications with 5,977 and 5,318 respectively.
And the minister has disclosed that the district human resource management committees mandated to recruit the teachers in the respective districts under the decentralized model screened, shortlisted and selected suitable candidates according to the needs of the district and submitted to the provincial human resource management committees for validation and consolidation.
He has further indicated that the provincial human resource management committees, in turn, submitted to the teaching service commission for the technical committee at national level to subsequently undertake the national consolidation and verification.
Mr Syakalima has disclosed that the government has allocated one billion nine hundred ninety-four million eight hundred seventeen thousand six hundred kwacha in the 2022 national budget in order to make the whole exercise of teacher recruitment possible.
He says the allocation has gone a long way in making it possible for the ministry to undertake the exercise which will improve the teacher-pupil ratio and enhance the quality of education.
He revealed that the average teacher-pupil ratio stands at 1to 58 for primary and 1to 38 for secondary schools against the required standard teacher-pupil ratio of 1 to 45 and 1 to 35 at primary and secondary school levels respectively.