ZIALE lacks full-time lecturers - Simukanga
THE Zambia Institute of Advanced Legal Education (ZIALE) needs resources to recruit full time lecturers to improve performance, Higher Education Authority Director General Professor Stephen Simukanga has said.
And Prof Simukanga has said that out of the 400 registered universities, only 33 were registered with PACRA. Prof Simukanga said that most of the lecturers were on part time basis, hence the need to cross-examine what was happening at the institution of law. He however observed that not everyone could teach because teaching was a skill. Speaking during ZNBC’s Sunday Interview Prof Simukanga reiterated that students going to ZIALE had the ability to do well, adding that there was no way such an institution would end up with such poor performance notwithstanding that the school of law was competitive. “The lecturers must be available to students but most of these lecturers are part-time and busy with other schedules. “When we look at the caliber of most of these students they are students who are capable to learn, they have already learned and have passed but we should interrogate what is happening at ZIALE and find a solution,” he said. He said the Higher Education Authority was coming up with regulations, regarding the promotion of professors to guide the industry. And the authority has called for a mix-up of lecturers in the universities to include both full and part-time staff. He said lack of adequate numbers of lecturers had impacted on the quality of performance in most of the universities as students in most cases had no access to lecturers at a time they needed help. The Authority was established to, among others, set standards for higher education, quality assurance as well as to register and accredit private higher education institutions. He said the other way the Authority was promoting quality higher education was by harmonizing the universities’ learning programmes.