Investigation: Muhammad Ibrahim
The advent of the Corona pandemic was not just a passing passage that did not bring with it impacts and challenges in the fields of science. Although the education sector in the UAE was the most stable and well-established, and the doors of schools remained open to receive students throughout the days of the pandemic, the decisions of some private schools were “incorrect”, to pay for them now that the coronavirus is gone.
Decisions to terminate the services of teachers with expertise and competencies constitute real suffering for a number of private school administrations now. As job advertisements have not stopped for a day since the beginning of the current academic year 2022-2023, and all attempts have failed to attract alternatives with the same ability, skill, and expertise of teachers who were laid off during the pandemic, which prompted many departments to attract modest competencies with no experience, in return for low salaries to fill the shortcomings. in the teaching staff.
On the other hand, major educational groups benefited from the decisions to terminate the services of teachers during the pandemic, and managed the crisis wisely and professionally. As it went against the current and strengthened the status of its teachers and cadres; Rather, she appointed teachers whose services were terminated, to employ their energies, experiences, and educational capabilities, in the belief that the pandemic is temporary and quick to leave.
A number of educators believe that the problem is not a shortage of teachers, but lies in the recruitment process, which has become difficult and up to the point of impossible, due to the lack of distinguished teaching competencies that can keep pace with the development and changes of the current stage.
Teachers emphasized that the most prominent challenges for schools currently lie in their inability to re-appoint distinguished teachers whose services were terminated during the pandemic days. As most of them joined a new job, and some of them explicitly refuse to return to a school that terminated its services during the crisis without reasons related to their professionalism, so that the schools face a real dilemma that is difficult to describe.
The effects of this phenomenon were not far from the parents; They emphasized their suffering from years of instability and unjustified continuous change of teachers, and their lack of knowledge of the real teacher of their children, calling on school administrations to follow quality standards when selecting educational cadres, especially in the early education stage, given the attachment of children at this stage to those who teach them.
«Gulf» discusses with the private education community the problem of deficiencies, methods of attracting teachers, the challenges of scarcity of competencies and ways to overcome this phenomenon.
Analytical reading
The beginning was with an analytical reading of the “Gulf” of the educational scene in private schools. Some of them dealt with the pandemic with a package of non-future decisions, to reduce operating expenses and preserve profits, so they ended the services of teachers and other cadres, and assigned teaching tasks to some administrators instead of teachers during the application of distance learning.
Despite the continuity of education and the remaining of fees without prejudice to it, most schools dispensed with half of the teachers under the pretext that they were not needed in light of the application of hybrid education, to suffice with some low-paid cadres, to manage the teaching and learning process during that period, and thousands of teachers became without work, and none of them can complain; Because in the end it’s up to the school’s desire to hire them or not.
educational groups
In a related context, the decisions of major educational groups came in contrast to the measures taken by some schools against their teachers. As it managed the crisis wisely, and realized that the pandemic is temporary and will pass quickly, it strengthened its teachers and cadres in various disciplines. Rather, it succeeded in attracting teachers with experience, competence and skill, to appoint them and employ their abilities and benefit from their expertise in the field.
After the end of the pandemic, the education community confirmed the real return to the science platforms again, and private schools started to complete their cadres again, but with the continuation of research and examination, I discovered that they are in real trouble due to the lack of distinguished competencies that they can rely on in teaching students, in addition to the rejection of most experienced teachers. And the skill is to return to it again, and the search is still going on for new teachers with various competencies, experiences and skills to fill the deficiencies.
Huge challenges
A number of school principals and educators (Kholoud.F., Majd.A., and Rania.M.) believe that the pandemic brought with it many challenges, and negatively affected the educational process at all levels, and the education community is still healing the wounds caused by the pandemic, explaining that the decisions that coincided with With the pandemic, it did not stem from the school administrations, as some believe, but rather direct directions from the school owners themselves, and the principal or principal cannot object to the instructions of the owner.
In their explanation of the cadres targeted by the decisions to terminate services, they said that all cadres, without exception, were in the process of termination of service. As the list included teachers, supervisors, administrators, technicians, and even support service workers, and schools in the pandemic continued to operate in small numbers, so that the teacher performed the tasks of 6 teachers, and the administrator performed the tasks of an entire department in school management, in addition to supervision and follow-up work.
current challenges
In their stand with the current challenges, they stated that there is a crisis that schools are suffering due to a shortage of teachers, the inability to provide alternatives, or to appoint cadres with competencies and expertise within the country, as most of the available ones are without experience or with modest competence, in addition to that their aspirations for salaries exceed the requests for teachers’ salaries. experienced during the pandemic. In their proposals to address this problem, they stressed the importance of providing real training and rehabilitation packages to build the capacities and skills of incompetent teachers at the present time.
Skilled teachers
And in a stand with a number of teachers (Salah M., Maha.A., Wafaa.A), they stressed the difficulty of having skilled teachers at the present time for appointment, and all the existing educational staff need qualification and training, and this is a very costly trend for school administrations, indicating that schools The one that dismissed its teaching staff during the pandemic made a big mistake and will continue to pay the price for years to come to return to its previous state before Corona.
They added that despite schools’ needs for teachers and other cadres, the appointment process still wears the cloak of nepotism and nepotism, which exacerbates the crisis. Some departments do not focus solely on efficiency; Rather, you deal with the job applicant according to the means he has, from any country and from any family, and focus on his age, not his experience.
after dispensing
The “Gulf” contacted a number of teachers who were laid off during the pandemic and “preferred not to mention their names.” They confirmed that what happened to them during the days of Corona is indescribable. As the decisions to terminate services were blind and did not see them and did not take into account the conditions of closure and the difficulty of obtaining a job at the time. In their response to a question about the possibility of returning to their schools again in the event that they asked them to work, they confirmed that this matter is impossible.
extent of influence
We stopped for a while with a number of parents to find out the extent of the impact of the lack of teachers on their children. Sameh Fahd, Suheir Madkour, Maha Ali, Safia Arabi, Hamda Abdullah, and Ahmed Mounir confirmed their suffering with the instability of a teacher for their children for years.