MoE to lay off 1,961 non-Kuwaiti male, female teachers next year
Demand up for educational ‘babysitters’
KUWAIT CITY, Oct 3: Ministry of Education is on the verge of laying off 1,961 non-Kuwaiti male and female teachers by next July. This decision will affect those who teach five subjects – Islamic education, history, geography, psychology and philosophy, reports AlQabas daily.
According to informed sources, the Public Education Sector has collated the list of teachers in all disciplines based on the directives of the concerned authorities.
They explained that the Civil Service Commission (CSC) has asked the Ministry of Education to provide it with a detailed statement on the number of non-Kuwaiti employees who hold the specializations in Islamic Sharia, history, geography, psychology and philosophy. The information requested include the names, civil ID numbers, job titles, qualifications and the total number of non-Kuwaiti employees in each of the aforementioned specialties.
CSC stressed that each specialization should have a separate, detailed statement in order for it to conduct necessary study so that optimal implementation of the decisions of CSC can be reached concerning the rules and procedures for government job training.
According to the official statistics, the number of non-Kuwaiti Islamic education teachers in the three educational stages – primary, intermediate and secondary – is 1,319, out of whom 670 are men and 649 are women of Arab and Gulf nationalities. The number of expatriate teachers working in the social specialization is 240 (174 male and 66 female).
The number of non-Kuwaiti teachers is 104 teachers (58 male and 46 female) for history , 213 teachers (108 male and 105 female) for geography, 27 teachers (22 male and 5 female) for psychology and sociology, and 58 teachers (57 male and one female) for philosophy.
The sources revealed that the concerned departments are working on preparing lists of all teachers in the five aforementioned specializations in order to send them to CSC based on the request of the latter to study the possibility of terminating their services.
Meanwhile, the COVID-19 pandemic has changed many concepts and situations. It does not depend on the economic, political, or even educational aspects. It has greatly brought about a change in the social reality, penetrated homes, and contributed to changing a situation that had remained stable for years, especially with the current trend in Kuwait to adopt distance education for all educational stages, starting with the kindergarten level and all the way to the university level, reports Al-Rai daily.
In the face of the repercussions of this pandemic on the economy, which was the most affected sector, and subsequent reduction of jobs and termination of the services of many people, a new profession has emerged in the market. It is known as “teacher sitter”, which is related to babysitting children at home and following up on their education, especially for those in the early educational stages.
Since parents are busy at work and children are staying at home, it was deemed necessary to think of a way to follow up on children who are at home. This led to the idea of “babysitter”, which has become highly popular especially with the switch to online education. The “babysitter” would be responsible for babysitting children and following up their online lessons, at a monthly salary of about KD 500.
This new job in the market replaces the phenomenon of private tuitions, which witnessed a significant decline with the adoption of distance education.