GOVERNMENT HAS NO PLANS TO RECRUIT TEACHERS NEXT YEAR – MUSOKOTWANE
Government has announced that it has no plans to recruit additional teachers next year, as it moves to address what it says are longstanding staffing imbalances in the education sector.
Finance and National Planning Minister Situmbeko Musokotwane disclosed this during a ZNBC Sunday Interview, explaining that Government first wants to establish the actual teacher shortage in schools before undertaking another recruitment exercise.
“No, for next year, there’s no plan to recruit teachers,” Dr Musokotwane said.
He explained that some teachers are working at schools where they are not officially deployed, leaving other schools understaffed despite records showing that they have adequate numbers of teachers.
The Minister gave an example of schools where records indicate that five or six teachers are deployed, but only two or three are physically present, while other schools have more teachers than their official staffing levels.
He said: “In one school, there are few teachers because they’ve gone to another school where there are now more teachers than needed.”
Dr Musokotwane described the situation as a longstanding administrative problem that needs to be addressed through proper deployment of teachers.
He said Government wants teachers to return to their designated stations so that authorities can establish the genuine staffing gaps before considering further recruitment.
“For now, it is a bit confused. But we need to solve this problem so that we now know what the gap is before you can start recruiting,” he said.
The Minister also acknowledged that teacher deployment is one of the functions that should be handled through decentralisation, allowing the issue to be addressed more effectively at district level.
Northwestern Newspaper 2026