Teacher Retrenchment Not The Solution

BY TIJAN NIMAGA, Bronx New York

Gambia's Education Minister Fatou Faye

For the past fourteen years, The Gambia’s educational sector under the government of President Yahya Jammeh has been progressively worsening and now it is virtually a failure. And now unable to fix the quagmire, the government has resorted to scapegoat employees as evident in the recent harassment geared towards unqualified Gambian teachers. The Point Newspaper recently ran a lead in which the Deputy Permanent Secretary Mr. Kungkung Jobateh revealed the government’s proposed plan of retrenchment, which will cost many unqualified teachers their jobs and the ramifications on many Gambian families are simply, enormous. The move is potentially calamitous hence the need for immediate public attention.

According to the information gathered from Banjul, the government of The Gambia will retrench all unqualified teachers without 3 passes at the School Certificate Level regardless of whether the teachers had spent the past fifteen years teaching as Unqualified Teachers. However, what the Department of Education failed to understand is, since the colonial, postcolonial eras and until 1994 unqualified teachers have produced thousands of what are now the cream of the crop of the nation. While qualification is absolutely a necessity, it most not be forgotten that a journey of 1000 miles begins with a step. Besides, experience is very significant in the transfer of knowledge and while these poor folks may not have gone to college, fifteen years of teaching is enormous experience and requires some of form of recognition. Therefore, what really matters in this equation is the experience of some of these veteran teachers in question and how that could be harnessed to provide the requisite professional training to meet the needs of their pupils and the demands of the educational sector. Furthermore, experience stands alone and knowledge also stands alone and if wisely used, the two are complementary just as tea and sugar are. The wise combination of both in any field grants good and overwhelming result. For instance, some unqualified teachers who have been in the teaching field for a decade or more are more likely to be better in the immediate transfer of pedagogic skills than a fresh college graduate with no previous teaching experience if one dares to compare their experience and enthusiasm in the field. We are not saying that the government should fill the schools with teachers that can’t teach but to test them and see the ones that are good enough for future teaching responsibilities.

During the time of Alhagi Sir Dawda Jawara, a training course for unqualified teachers was established as one of the academic programs by the Department of Education to teach teachers and prepare them to become qualified teachers. That unique program produced many qualified teachers for the nation during the early 1970s and also made the field very rewarding. Similar courses such as the annual Upgrading Course offered in the long summer vacations to experienced unqualified teachers all contributed to what turned out to be a robust and rewarding educational system during the Sir Dawda era. Therefore, what our poor unqualified teachers need is a route to professionalism and not retrenchment after a decade of hard work to their nation. Remember, there are thousands of unemployed Gambians all of whom are risking their lives to cross the Atlantic for Europe’s perceived greener pastures. How many of our young men have perished in the risky voyages thus far? Rest assured that once retrenched, some or most these poor teachers will also venture into these risky voyages and may like numerous others before them, also perish.