In response to the overwhelming number of students enrolled for Universal Secondary Education (USE), the Ministry of Education is to recruit 1,800 new high school teachers.
Robinson Nsumba-Lyazi, assistant commissioner for secondary education, says the ministry recently recruited and posted 2,000 teachers, but they were not enough to meet the need in government-aided schools. He says the additional teachers will help alleviate some of the strain on teaching staff in USE partner schools.
Prior to the introduction of USE this year, there was one teacher for every 80 secondary school students in the country. This ratio has reported increased to one teacher for 120 students in USE schools.
Nsumba-Lyazi says the large-scale recruitment of high school teachers will become an annual exercise.
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The Ministry of Education is specifically targeting Grade Five and graduate teachers to teach compulsory science subjects, mathematics, English, history and geography.
Of the 2,320 teachers recruited at the start of this academic year, 811 were graduate teachers and 1,509 were Grade Five teachers. Each of the USE partner schools was assigned two or three teachers to help kick start the program.
