Officials – The Ministry of Basis And Secondary Education
By Ramatoulie Jawo
The Ministry of Basic and Secondary Education (MoBSE) held a press conference on Friday to update the public on the newly revised Teaching Cadre Scheme of Service, the re-categorisation and re-classification of public schools, and the National Teacher Postings for 2024.
This event was aimed at promoting transparency and keeping the public informed about key developments within The Gambia’s education sector.
The updated Scheme of Service introduces a more clearly defined career structure, designed to attract, motivate, and retain qualified teachers.
Louis Moses Mendy, the Permanent Secretary at MoBSE, provided an overview of the changes, explaining the delay in releasing teacher postings. He revealed that around 3,862 teachers have been promoted to different levels.
“What we have done is to look at the teacher Cadre, and in looking at the teaching Cadre, we try to reverse it so that it speaks to the time. We are in 2024, the generation in which we are in requires that we need to speak to the time in everything that we do. For that reason, the Scheme of service was subjected to a review, and luckily it got approval by the Government through the Ministry of Public Service, and we are very grateful,” he said.
He explained that the previous structure was based on Schedule 45, which limited the teaching cadre to classifications like A, B, C, or Class 123 schools. However, the revised scheme has expanded these categories from A to E and 1 to 5. This shift has opened up numerous administrative positions at the school level, necessitating the careful placement of teachers, which contributed to the delay in the postings.
“But now, with the revision of this scheme of service, we have moved from A to E and from one to five. So those people who were heading perhaps the C schools will naturally now be moved to the E school, which is the biggest, and also to the five school, which is also the biggest. So what this has done is that it has created a quiet number of Administrative positions at the school level, such that people will ordinarily have to move. And the movement of teachers, we need to ensure that they are appropriately and properly placed, and that takes time. So we needed to have that time to ensure that everyone is appropriately placed before we could release the postings,” he said.
PS Mendy also addressed concerns about the relocation of teachers from urban to rural areas, clarifying that this was not a deliberate policy but a default outcome of the revised scheme.
“It’s also important to know that because of the movement, someone who is maybe a head in class B would be equivalent to a senior teacher in class C, and also an ordinary teacher in class D, or Class E,” he said.
Ebrima Saidy, Director of Human Resources at MoBSE, highlighted the positive impact of the revised Scheme of Service, particularly regarding teacher welfare.
“What is most important for us, as a director of Human Resources, is the promotion of people from their current stages to the next levels. The scheme of service before it was reversed had classes A, B, and C. But now that it has been reversed, it has moved up to E. And this has created numerous vacancies for the teachers to be promoted,” he highlighted.
Musa Bah, Principal Education Officer, and Essa Sowe, Deputy General Secretary of The Gambia Teachers Union, both part of the technical team behind the review, emphasized the scheme’s importance for teachers.
“First, I will start with the number of schools. Prior to the categorization of schools, we have 47% of our schools were not categorized. What are the implications of that? It means that 47% of the schools were run by people who are headmasters, but in reality they were in charge, and it has implications in terms of earning. As a result, we can proudly tell you that, as of today, our total number of schools is 779. Schools have all been categorized. And that means all the headmasters, or the principals of those schools, will be status holders, and that goes with promotions and increases in terms of earning,” said Musa Bah.
The MoBSE officials encouraged teachers to engage in negotiations rather than rejecting their postings outright, stressing that refusal to take up a posting constitutes misconduct and may result in serious penalties.