By Bida Elly David
A South Sudanese senior education expert has blamed the decline in the Country’s education sector due to poor teachers’ remuneration policy and urged the leadership to abstain valuing V8s to prioritize learning for nation building.
He spoke during the awarding ceremony for outstanding retired teachers Tuesday at the freedom hall in Juba.
Speaking on behalf of the teachers, Prof. Ben Kotoro a senior education expert said the South Sudan education system remained very poor and shaking because the leadership values luxurious cars to learning.
“Buy no more V8s, build many schools and attract more teachers. Over the past years, teaching profession has been on decline as everybody knows and the decline on the profession could be equated with the covid-19 pandemic and less salaries” “Covid-19 kills individuals but lack of teachers kills the nation but all time of change that the Ministry of General Education and Instructions has taken recently particularly those that have some potential to yield positive outcomes remain challenging despite the efforts made by the Ministry of Education,” he stated.
Koroto said shortage of professional teachers in the Country has affected all education levels in aspects due to the capacity that the teaching profession has lost to attract candidates.
“Teaching profession in this Country affects all education levels in South Sudan. This is because it has lost its capacity to attract candidates not only that but best candidates.”
“Among the main reasons are the decline in prestige of the teaching profession, deteriorating working condition and relatively low salaries compared to other intellectual professions,” he cited.
The educationist reiterated that the major global factor that determines the progress and affirmative learning is the quality of a teacher who deserves absolute motivation and the teaching which measures the ability and stance of learning to the learners.
“From the different education system in the world, the most important factor that determines how well children do is the quality of the teachers and the teaching itself. The best education systems in the world draws teachers the top among graduates but vigorously and effectively ours in South Sudan is instead the opposite,” he noted.
“Most People think that teaching is something that doesn’t require high level candidate and they are mistaken. If you have those kind of people, make sure that the kind of quality people you are going to have for the nation, things are going to be very bad and that is why we are equated all over the world with our quality of education and the type of man power we produce to represent us in that arena,” he stressed.
Koroto urged the government to make the teaching profession attractive through provision of necessary incentives to build their courage towards service delivery.
For her part, Agnes Lokudu, a senior educationist commended the president’s efforts for having awarded the outstanding retired teachers in the Country and admonished him to continue carrying the same initiative by prioritizing teachers such that they demonstrate much commitment to serve the nation.
She said the Country’s education system can’t be compared to the previous days due to the number of untrained teachers who teach without quality knowledge on teaching methodologies.
Agnes however appealed to the teachers to bear the situation despite the low pay they are undergoing hoping that things would change in due cause of time.