Ministry must stem the tide of resignations

I REFER to “Early retirement among teachers worrying” (The Star, April 20; online at https://bit.ly/3K23ewS), in which Umno deputy president Datuk Seri Mohamad Hasan urged the Education Ministry to explain why so many teachers were choosing to take optional retirement when they could still contribute to their noble profession.

Mohamad was reacting to the National Union of the Teaching Profession’s (NUTP) claim that more than 10,000 teachers have been submitting applications annually for early retirement over the past few years, and this was in addition to the equal number of teachers who were leaving the service on mandatory retirement.

What’s worrying is that the NUTP’s figures far exceed the ministry’s statistics released on Nov 9 last year, which stated that only 4,360 applications from teachers for optional retirement were received beginning January 2021.

Mohamad said, and rightly so, that the Education Ministry has to intervene and arrest this trend as the early retirement of teachers, especially the experienced ones, would be a huge loss to the country.

There are myriad challenges faced by teachers, and more so during the Covid-19 pandemic when they had to move to online platforms to deliver their lessons.

The demands of online learning and teaching would have severely tested the emotional and psychological resilience of teachers, especially those who are not savvy with information and communication technology.

There have also been feedback from teachers who are burdened by clerical work, which interfered with their actual task of teaching.

The Education Ministry cannot take the matter lightly, as shortage of experienced teachers will affect the quality of teaching, performance of students and also the image of schools.

The ministry must therefore devise strategies to retain teachers.

These would include providing extra incentives for those working in remote areas, aligning the salaries of teachers with those of civil servants, encouraging professionalism among school administrators, and promoting teachers regularly based on their performance.

The problem cannot be solved by simply training and recruiting new teachers to replace those who chose to retire early.

C. SATHASIVAM SITHERAVELLU

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