URBAN SCHOOLS OVERSTAFFED; A MYTH NOT A FACT!!!
By Mukela Mulonda
Mongu BETUZ Chair
For the past few days, both the Fourth and Fifth Estates are awash with one screaming headline that urban schools are overstaffed!
This has made me think and so, allow me to bust out this myth.
To say that urban schools are overstaffed is an easy story to tell, but it is not a true story in most cases. When you look at the real numbers, the real classrooms, and the real payroll system, the overstaffing claim falls apart.
In most cases, urban schools are not overstaffed. In fact, they are overwhelmed. To substantiate my argument, the four points bellow form the basis:
*1. Blame the System, Not the Teacher*
People who are trying to win in popularity want to blame a teacher . A teacher cannot be blamed for where they are posted. Teachers do not transfer themselves. They do not approve their own deployments or movements.
A teacher applies, is recruited, is deployed, and is transferred by the Ministry. If a teacher is in Mongu town today, it is because the system put them there following the needs of that school. To threaten teachers with discipline, dismissal or humiliation for following the system that placed them where they are today is to punish the worker for the mistake (if at all there’s any) of the manager.
If there is a mismatch, it is an administrative mismatch, not a moral failure by teachers to a point where a teacher is painted to be a thief who draws a salary dubiously.
*2. Urban Pupil Populations Have grown!*
The argument for overstaffing is often based on old thinking. It assumes the town of today is the town of 20 years ago.
It is not!
Free education, urban migration, and population growth have pushed thousands of new pupils into town schools. For example, Kanyonyo Secondary school has more than 1,200 pupils. Just 10 years ago, it had less than 700 pupils but the school establishment has not changed. Will you be correct to say that the school is overstaffed if the PEO and DEBS transfer teachers there to cater for the needs of the increase?
You cannot compare today’s urban pupil population to olden days and then call the schools overstaffed because it has more teachers than it had before. It has more teachers because it has far more children.
Research in Zambia has found urban classes with over 50 pupils per class, and in here in Mongu teacher to pupil ratios of over 1 to 70 are there. That is not overstaffing. Is it overcrowding muutwile?
*3. Use Teacher to Pupil Ratio, Not Classroom Space*
Too often, overstaffing is judged by looking at a staffroom or counting teachers in comparison to buildings at a particular school. That is the wrong test.
The correct test is simple: How many pupils is each teacher responsible for?
The Ministry’s own rule is that no school should have a pupil-teacher ratio greater than 40 pupils to one teacher. If a school has 2,000 pupils, it needs at least 50 teachers to meet that standard. If it has 45 teachers, it is understaffed, even if the staffroom looks full.
Counting classroom space is misleading. Many urban schools have too few classrooms, so teachers are forced to share rooms, teach in shifts, or teach combined classes. A shortage of classroom space does not mean a surplus of teachers. It means that there are too many pupils and too few rooms, and teachers stretched to the limit.
If we want to determine overstaffing, we must use the teacher to pupil ratio, class by class, subject by subject. Anything else is *guesswork*!
*4. The Payroll Mismatch: Upgraded Schools With No Pay Points*
*Here is the part the public is rarely told*: Many so-called overstaffed schools are not overstaffed at all. No! They are victims of a payroll mismatch.
In recent years, many schools were upgraded. A primary school becomes a combined school. A junior secondary becomes a full secondary. But how many have PMEC IDs? What was seen at these schools was that, enrolment grew, new grades were added, new subjects introduced, and more teachers were deployed to teach at these schools.
Look, most of the new schools have no pay point of their own. Teachers teaching there remain on the payroll of their old school, or on the payroll of a rural school where they were first deployed. On paper, it looks like School A has 17 teachers for one class, while School B has none. In reality, those teachers are physically teaching in School B, but their salaries are still being counted under School A.
Research has found that at least 40 percent of teachers did not work at the school where they were being paid. That is not teachers abandoning rural schools. That is a system that has failed to update its own payroll to match its own upgrades and transfers.
*Fix the Data Before You Move the Teachers*
Urban schools do not need fewer teachers. They need accurate data, updated pay points, and a staffing formula based on real pupil numbers.
Before we talk about redistributing teachers, let us first:
– Count the pupils, not just the teachers
– Use teacher to pupil ratio as the criteria for overstaffing
– Create pay points for all newly upgraded schools
– Update the payroll to show where a teacher actually teaches, not where they were first deployed
To call urban schools overstaffed while their teachers handle 60, 70, or 80 pupils per class is to punish success and ignore reality. Town teachers are not idle. They are overloaded. And they deserve support, not blame.