Teacher Education and Development Study in Mathematics - IEA

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TEACHER PAY AND STUDENT MATHEMATICS ACHIEVEMENT
As of 2002, 6.7% of teachers at the community junior secondary level were untrained.
Although a corresponding figure for the senior secondary level is not available, the
number of trained teachers in junior and senior secondary schools doubled between
1995 and 2004—to almost 10,000 teachers. Only six percent of these teachers were
untrained.
Teacher recruitment and hiring
Teacher recruitment and hiring is highly centralized in Botswana, with the Department
of Teaching Service Management (TSM) within the Ministry of Education responsible
for teacher employment in the country. TSM manages the recruitment of teachers for
all government and government-supported schools. The department is also responsible
for deciding teacher postings; one of its primary aims in this regard is to ensure that
teacher distribution across the country’s schools remains equitable.
A general shortage of teachers is indicated by the fact that 9.2% of teachers at the junior
secondary level and 17.6% at the senior secondary level are expatriates. No special
effort is in place to recruit teachers into areas such as mathematics and science. As it
is, teachers’ unions have been actively calling for the removal of differences in salary by
level of schooling (primary versus secondary) and type of qualification (diploma versus
degree). They argue that this situation constitutes discrimination as defined by various
International Labor Organization documents.
Salaries
Teachers in Botswana are relatively well paid (see Table 14 and Figures 7 and 8),
particularly women. As estimated from the 2002/2003 household survey, female teachers
(combined primary and secondary) earn more than scientists and non-scientists, even
though the scientists surveyed tended to have higher-level degrees than many of the
teachers in the sample. Among males, scientists earn considerably more than teachers,
providing evidence for why females are more likely to enter the teaching profession.
Table 14: Botswana, Mean Monthly Earnings of Post-Secondary Degree Holders,
2002 to 2003, by Gender and Occupation
Males
Females
Age Teachers Scientists Non-scientists Teachers Scientists Non-scientists
20–24 879 555 223 221
25–29 892 545 722 884 649 605
30–34 1,336 2,733 773 1,044 1,450 693
35–44 1,930 2,046 1,141 782 993 795
45–54 1,366 1,217 1,008 1,673 724 1,246
55–64 2,608 1,683 1,095 634 848
Source: Estimates made from data for 2004 provided by the Central Statistics Office (CSO) and from
data from the Household Income Expenditure Survey, 2002/2003.