With support from the European Union to the education sector in Sierra Leone, the Teaching Service Commission (TSC) together with its partners concluded a month long job fair recruitment exercise across the country. The exercise started in Kenema for the Eastern Region, Bo for the Southern Region, Bombali for the Northern Region, Port Loko for the North West Region and ended in Freetown for the Western Rural/Urban.
According to the Director of Teacher Management, Marian Abu, the purpose of the job fairs was to facilitate the recruitment of science and math teachers to be deployed in remote communities in dire need. She added that during the exercise in the respective regions, the commission saw a plethora of qualified teachers for math and the sciences seeking employment into the noble profession.
“The situation has always looked like there is a shortage of math and science teachers, but seeing the turnout during these job fairs, we are now led to believe otherwise.” Madam Abu noted that it was good that the TSC decided to organise the job fair in the regions to give an opportunity to qualified teachers in their various localities to gain employment rather than deploying teachers from other parts to be assigned somewhere remote, which in many instances is responsible for scarcity in math and science teachers in remote communities.
“They are there just waiting to be recruited and equally distributed across the country,” she concluded.
At the Sapphire Court hall in Freetown where the job fair was held for the Western Rural and Western Urban, Samuel Thomas, a qualified math teacher for almost 15 years, described the exercise as the TSC giving a fair opportunity to all qualified teachers in the sciences and math, noting that it will also help the commission to know the number of qualified math and science teachers in the TSC database. He appealed to the administration of the Ministry of Basic and Senior Secondary Education to encourage more children to go into the sciences through scholarships or some other scheme in order for Sierra Leone to start producing an appreciable amount of not only doctors and engineers but also laboratory scientists for the 21st century.
By Ade Campbell