Getting Teachers Back to School

The Tajik authorities need to address the shortage of teachers by enticing them back into the schools with a package of guaranteed social and economic benefits, NBCentralAsia observers say.



Last week, Education Minister Abdudjabbor Rahmonov said that less than half of the almost 4,000 teacher-training graduates last year actually took up teaching jobs. That left a nationwide shortfall of some 6,000 teachers.



Commentators warn that without coordinated action to overcome this crisis, inadequate teacher numbers will have knock-on effects: fewer well-educated school-leavers will mean fewer skilled workers and professionals in Tajikistan.



“If the problems in education are not solved now, there will be no one available to work in 10 or 15 years, when the Soviet-educated generation is gone,” an education ministry source told NBCentralAsia.



This source does not believe pay increases alone will attract more teachers; instead, the profession should be made more prestigious and local government should provide teachers with land, housing, electricity and other essentials on a preferential basis.



“Increasing salaries will not solve the problem of getting teachers back into the schools,” said the ministry source. “A package of measures should be adopted as in Soviet times, when there was a broad range of incentives, conditions and housing to attract young professionals.”



Rustam Nazarov, deputy head of the Party for Economic Reforms, argues that students who have received a grant for a teacher-training course should be required to repay it by working as teachers.



“The state spends money on them, but then the students don’t work in their specialist area,” said Nazarov. “There needs to be an arrangement, such as there is in all civilised countries, whereby students are required to repay the funds spent on them over a certain period of time.”



(News Briefing Central Asia draws comment and analysis from a broad range of political observers across the region.)