Tanzanian schools face shortage of 80,000 teachers

Dodoma. Government schools face a shortage of 80,000 teachers, it has been revealed in parliament.

The Deputy Minister of State in the President's Office (Regional Administration and Local Government), Mr Mwita Waitara, said the shortage of primary and secondary schools teachers stand at 66,000 and 14,000 respectively.

Mr Waitara revealed this on Wednesday, May 8 during a question and answer session.

He was responding to a question by the Mwanga lawmaker Jumanne Maghembe (CCM), who sought to know government strategies aimed at closing the gap of the huge shortage of teachers.

According to Prof Maghembe, until last year, Mwanga District had 590 teachers teaching in 110 government primary schools.

"There is an acute shortage of primary school teachers in Mwanga District. I just want to know the plans the government has to close the gap of 384 teachers," he asked.

Responding, Mr Waitara said last month the government employed 4,549 primary and secondary teachers, of which some 26 were allocated to Mwanga District.

"Out of the teachers allocated to Mwanga District, 21 are for primary schools, with five are for secondary schools," he said.

He added that out of the teachers employed in April, 3,089 were for primary schools and 1,460 for secondary schools.

"We are doing all in our powers to steadily increase the number of teachers to fill the gap," noted Mr Waitara.

Tanzania is one of the top ten countries across the world with the highest projection of total number of teachers who have to be recruited by 2030.

Going by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (Unesco) Institute for Statistics and the Education for All Global Monitoring Report, Tanzania needs to recruit at least 406,600 new teachers by 2030.