Reddy welcomes ECE pay rise

$6.8m was allocated as salary grant

The Minister for Education Mahendra Reddy has welcomed the pay rise for pre-school teachers. He said Early Childhood Education (ECE) teachers could expect a pay rise come August 1. It was announced by the Minister for Finance Aiyaz SayedKhaiyum during the 2016-2017 Budget address in Parliament on Wednesday.

A total of $2.1million was allocated for ECE while $6.8m was allocated as the salary grant for ECE teachers. Mr Reddy said ECE teachers were paid very low salaries and one third of the salaries was paid by the school management. “The second issue that they were facing was management was not paying on time so they were really struggling. “So here what the Ministry of Finance has delivered is that we are paying full salary to them. We must remember this is for half days work,” he said. “This is a major jump about 2.6 times higher than what they are getting and this will solve a lot of problems and get us to work with the teachers to look after our kids and prepare them well for Year One.” Mr Reddy said the increase in salary for ECE teachers would attract more people to establish ECE around the country. “A lot of parents will demand for ECE education to their children before they get into Year One. That’s exactly what we want, to send them to ECE so they are well prepared for Year One,” he said. Mr Reddy said he was very happy with the allocation made to his ministry and was excited about moving forward with the reforms they were undertaking. “This year we have resources to consolidate and strengthen the delivery of the reforms.

“In addition to that, we are very happy that our major allocation for the reconstruction of the schools and we are targeting that by the end of this December all these schools should be constructed and ready,” he said. Meanwhile, the Ministry of Education, Heritage and Arts was allocated a total of $448.5m compared to $432.2m allocated in the previous Budget.