EARLY CHILDHOOD TEACHERS WANT SALARY UPGRADE

By Kalobwe Bwalya

EARLY Childhood Education Teachers (ECET) have called on the Government through the Ministry of Education to quickly finalize the salary upgrade for teachers who are degree holders.

In an interview ECET Executive Director Exilda Silanda said teachers that were employed by the Government last year, were still in the same salary category as certificate holders.

Ms. Silanda said this has had a negative impact among teachers in their execution of duty as they were demotivated.

She said teachers who were degree holders were not supposed to be getting the same salaries as certificate holders and that if the current situation was not addressed, it would have a knock-on effect on the learners arising from a demotivated workforce.

She said the perception towards early childhood teachers from the public institutions was terribly bad which had also contributed to poor performance in the education sector.

She added that ECET was looked down upon by the society which was now slowly affecting the sector as well as the learners.

“The Government, through the Ministry of Education, should quickly consider upgrading the salary scales for teachers holding degrees and masters in early childhood education if the sector is to improve because these teachers are being downgraded to failures, despite being mentors and a foundation to every child before getting to grade one,” Ms. Silanda said.

And Ms. Silanda said early childhood education was still faced by various challenges in terms of educational materials that learners should be using.

She observed that pupils were slow learners, hence needed advanced curriculum teaching methods that could help them improve their foundation, but that the sector still had limited resources.

She said teachers put in a lot of effort in ensuring that the learners got to understand what they were taught at any given time.

She noted that early childhood education learners needed computers and notebooks that would help them know how to read at a tender age.

“It is sad that early childhood teachers have been regarded as failures or people without papers. They are sometimes referred to as grade 12 failures, and that has really affected their performance and execution of duties because they are frustrated and not regarded as professionals by the general public,” she complained.