A new workstream has been implemented in the CIDT supported Zambia Education Sector Support Technical Assistance (ZESSTA) Facility to improve human resources issues, such as teacher shortages, performance management and professional teaching standards.
The ‘Strengthening Human Resource Management’ stream of the ZESSTA Facility is designed to help rebalance Zambia’s teaching workforce, given current shortages in rural and remote areas and an overprovision of teachers in some urban schools. In addition, the initiatives being implemented will combat high levels of absence, poor behaviour and low motivation among teachers.
To achieve its key objective of improving performance management of teachers in schools, the team is working with a number of directorates in the Ministry of General Education (MoGE) to develop sets of national professional standards for teachers, teacher educators and headteachers.
These standards set out what is expected of these three groups and will support appointment and promotion processes, appraisal and staff development and the licensing and relicensing of teachers.
The team has worked closely with the MoGE Institutional Leadership and Management team to develop standards which will clarify the expectations of headteachers and help those headteachers performance manage their teaching teams.
Supported by the Director of Human Resources and Administration in the MoGE, ZESSTA is implementing pilot districts to audit the actual deployment of teachers in order to correct their pay and understand where under- and over-staffing exists.
CIDT’s Lilla Oliver, Core Adviser Curriculum (CA-C) at the ZESSTA Facility, commented on the potential impact of this work, “We’re excited about the impact that this initiative will have in Zambia, not only on teachers, but on the whole education system. If the country’s 90,000 teachers are better supported, this could have a significant positive effect on pupil learning and attainment.”
Find out more about our work in Zambia at the ZESSTA project page.
