Rakhine State aims to rid education department of ‘ghost’ teachers

Rakhine State aims to rid education department of ‘ghost’ teachers
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San Maung Than/Narinjara

Ghost workers in Rakhine (Arakan) State schools are being rooted out and exposed as fraudsters in an education official’s clean-up campaign.

State education officer U Aung Kyaw Tun said teachers who fail to make it to class will no longer be able to collect their salary for years on end, unnoticed by any administrators.

“We did surprise inspections in schools last year. There were even some teachers who had not been to the schools for 14 years in some townships,” he said.

In some cases, he said teachers paid university students taking distance courses to teach on their behalf.
“We have found that there is a custom of paying bribes to the township education officers in order to take out the salaries without teaching at the schools,” said U Aung Kyaw Tun.

He added that the common practice has led to a deterioration of the state’s education system, and vowed to eradicate the payroll problem through closer observation.

He was not without sympathy for teachers, however, especially those deployed to rural areas who face hardships that make the job untenable.

“Teachers faced difficulties making a living on their salaries after 1988. Some villages were not able to properly support the teachers and could not provide accommodation for them, so the teachers faced difficulties going to these villages. Since they were unable to go to school, they were unable to teach. That’s one reason why the education quality has declined,” he said.

Overlooking rampant cheating is another reason the state’s classrooms have performed poorly, he said, blaming not just students, but also parents and teachers for the issue.

“The students taking the matriculation exam believe they will pass the exam if they are lucky. What this means is that the lucky students have monitors who allow them to cheat, and the unlucky ones have teachers monitoring who don’t allow them to cheat,” he said.
The Rakhine State Education Department is working to eliminate both chronically truant teachers and cheaters through inspection efforts that began last year.

“The cheating starts from a young age and students not only cheat during the matriculation exam but they also cheat in their university exams for distance education. I saw many papers helping cheater at Bu May Village near Sittwe University after the exams for distance education were held,” said U Chan Thar, Rakhine State’s Minister of Social Affairs.

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