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Tunisia in need of 14,000 teachers

December 6, 2017 at 4:59 pm

Teachers delivering a school lesson in Tunisia [Ryan Whitney/Flickr]

More than 14,000 teachers are needed in Tunisia due to changes made to study schedules in 2016, according to Minister of education Hatem Ben Salem.

Speaking at a discussion on educational budgets, Ben Salem stressed the inability of public financial means to fill this “huge” lack of teachers and remedy this problem and pointed to the reduction in the number of teaching hours in primary schools.

The minister also denounced teaching recruitments made, according to him, following social pressures. “I am not saying that the recruitments and the decisions taken in the framework of the general amnesty are at the origin of the deterioration of the level of education in Tunisia,” he added.

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According to Ben Salem, 1,300 beneficiaries of the amnesty are currently teaching with 80 cases in the process of regularisation by the Ministry of Education.

In addition, Ben Salem announced that no less than 549 schools require immediate maintenance, and that 600 institutions lack drinking water, describing the state of the school infrastructure as “catastrophic”.

He also announced that an identification card for black spots in infrastructure will be established in order to take the necessary measures to deal with infrastructure issues.

During a conference on “school feeding and its role in school and social integration” given on 24 November, Ben Salem promised “a real revolution in the education system”.