Rate of Kuwaiti teachers leaving teaching field hits ‘highest level’

Conditions of expat teachers stuck abroad being examined

KUWAIT CITY, Jan 18: The turnover of Kuwaiti teachers from the field of teaching is heading to a significant decline during the current academic year. In the last year, it jumped to the highest level, recording 1,700 cases of resignation after the approval of the Disability Care Law and the end-of-service bonus. Normal type of resignations did not exceed in 400 cases, and most of them are routine annual retirements, reports Al-Rai daily.

According to an educational source, the policy of the Civil Service Commission (CSC) for Kuwaitization of government jobs will not include educational jobs, because it meets the percentage of Kuwaitis specified by the CSC, which is 70 percent for Kuwaitis and 30 percent for expatriates.

The percentage of Kuwaiti teachers in the government schools are 73 percent, and the percentage of their expatriate counterparts does not exceed 27 percent.

Rate of resignations among expatriates is on a decline. A committee was formed in the Cabinet to examine the conditions of expatriate teachers who are stuck abroad due to the health crisis, and the possibility of them returning to the country before the opening of schools and the return of regular classes at the beginning of the second

academic term.

There is a difference in the Kuwaitization rates in some other disciplines, as the percentage of expatriates in the specialization of science and agriculture is only ten percent, while the percentage of Kuwaitis in statistics and development fields is 100 percent. In some other specializations, there are very low percentages of expatriates, such as social and psychological services specializations for which the percentage of expatriates is only three percent.

The CSC called for the application of Kuwaitization to these specializations, but no alternative has been provided until this moment, as there are no candidates registered with the central

employment system for these jobs.

From educational to administrative jobs, the Ministry of Education, afflicted with administrative overload in its headquarters and its educational districts, can absorb the nominations by the CSC, because it is usually based on the needs of the ministry, even if it increased slightly by five or ten percent.

The source indicated that not all candidates want to work in the ministry, as many of them reject administrative and accounting work, and prefer to work in other government agencies.

Another educational source affirmed that only about 212 citizens, out of the 1,146 citizens nominated by the CSC in its last batch, recently reported to the

ministry for working in administrative positions, indicating that the batches of the graduates from the College of Education are referred directly to the educational zones for appointment in the teaching line without the need of going through the ministry.

The source said the Ministry of Education is one of the government agencies that is not popular with the recent graduates, as many of them prefer some of the agencies where there is less work and greater financial incentives, indicating that the accounting jobs in the ministry received a number of Kuwaiti youth, but they ended up going to other authorities after a few months due to the degree of hard and painstaking work.