The Ministry of Education has given in to pressure from the owners of private schools and canceled the use of a unified employment contract which set a minimum wage limit for private school teachers. The ministry justified its move by saying the contract needed more study and evaluation.
The contract must surely have been subjected to study before the ministry decided to permit it to be used. Why was it implemented and then later suspended? What happened to the contracts that preceded the introduction of the unified contract? Does this mean decisions are made and then followed by studies and an evaluation to determine whether they are feasible or not?
The unified employment contract failed for several reasons. The most important was the lack of any serious approach to address the problems relating to the terms of employment of many teachers in private school. The teachers receive modest salaries that are in no way linked to the volume of work they do or to the academic and practical qualifications they possess.
Two years ago the ministry was drumming into us its decision to enforce a minimum wage limit of SR4,000 for private school teachers. This was to be part of a mandatory contract required of all schools by the ministry; half the money was to come from the schools and the other half from the Human Resource Development Fund. Unfortunately, the decision never became reality and teachers continue to suffer exploitation, wondering what happened to the ministry’s promises to improve their lives.
The problem is that the ministry announced a new employment contract which sets salaries for private school teachers far lower than those paid to janitors, drivers and tea boys employed by the ministry. This is grossly unfair. Who knows? Perhaps this new decision will not stand and we will hear in a few weeks that it is undergoing more studies and further evaluation and for all that we know this may go on for the next few years.
Another reason for the failure of the ministry to enforce its decision is that it did not take into account the variations in admission fees charged by different private schools. It thus treated all schools as equal whether students paid a large fee or a small one. This made the owners of some schools feel they were being treated unjustly. Many of those schools could barely balance their income with their expenditures.
If the ministry is serious in addressing this problem, it must thoroughly study and carefully evaluate the conditions in all private schools and then determine the kind of support each one requires.
