Five Days In Class Work Week Returns for Teachers

Teachers are expected to return to a regular five-day work week, with the reinstatement of their full salaries. The Ministry of Education adjusted the work week for teacher in 2021, when ten percent of their salaries were deducted. For the first four days of the week, teachers were required to be in the classroom. On Fridays, teachers were given the option to work from home and classrooms across the country were closed on that day. Doctor Louis Zabaneh reasons that the newly developed curriculum reform framework requires five days of work. Additionally, many students are still behind due to the adverse impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Louis Zabaneh

Louis Zabaneh, Minister of State, Ministry of Education

“I believe the teachers know their responsibilities that they will go back on Fridays. In fact, if you look at the curriculum reform framework, which is available on our website, you will see laid out there very clearly, the subjects and the number of weeks, and that requires five days of work. Remember now, we also have the severe adverse impact of COVID, where we have done the best we can with the catch up programs for students in the last few weeks. We are going to be wrapping that up soon, eight weeks of learning in literacy and numeracy across the country for students from infant one to standard two. But, we still need to do more. Our diagnostics show that students are one or two years behind at the end of this last academic year, because of COVID. So, it is imperative and incumbent on all our stakeholders, the teachers, principals, management, us at the Ministry, all our stakeholders that in this transition year of the curriculum that we are all fully engaged, that we spend enough time with our students who hopefully will be able to remain face to face as much as possible. Certain high schools, I know, will be complementing their face to face with hybrid, with virtual, so that students who are behind can get opportunities to catch up, and that is important.”