Current teachers to lose their jobs if they continue to fail test

Serving teachers now face the possibility of losing their job if they will continue to fail the English Proficiency Test prepared by the Ministry of Education.

Permanent Secretary for Education Iowane Tiko says they are now putting mechanisms in place to see that the English Proficiency Test will be compulsory and ongoing for old and new teachers.

Tiko says parents raised concerns with the Attorney General and Minister for Education Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum about the declining status of spoken and written English of teachers during consultations.

He adds that realising these concerns, the Education Ministry made the English Proficiency Test compulsory.

50% of university graduates seeking to be teachers have failed the Ministry of Education’s English Proficiency Test.

About 2,600 graduates sat for the Job Test hoping to get one of the 2,500 teaching positions being offered by the Ministry.

More than 50% of the graduates that sat for the test were from FNU.

Tiko says those that failed the English Proficiency Test will get a chance to re-sit the test this Saturday.

He says if they fail the test again then they have to find another job.

Tiko says it is a basic test with multiple choice questions and imagine if they had instituted composition writing in the test.

He says when they assessed some of the letters being written by teachers to the Ministry of Education headquarters, they could not believe that it was being written by teachers in the field.