Voluntary Service Organisation (VSO), on Tuesday, held a day-long meeting on valuing teachers’ research, for its stakeholders at Tango Resource Centre around the Independence Stadium.

“Valuing Teachers” is a project VSO initiated, as a follow-up to its advocacy findings that teacher motivation has a critical role in the delivery of quality education.

David Clamp, VSO Country Director, said eight countries have completed the valuing teachers’ research and have used the research results to work with partners in education advocacy. Mr Clamp added that the research findings were being used by the Global Campaign for Education, as part of its advocacy campaign to increase the number of trained teachers and improve the terms and conditions of service of teachers in order to meet the Education For All goals. “This is part of the bigger campaign of VSO and is the same in other countries. We can use a huge voice to represent the teachers in The Gambia,” he said.

According to him, VSO The Gambia has been working in partnership with the EFA Campaign Network and the Gambia Teachers Union (GTU), to conduct valuing teachers’ research in The Gambia.

“The research stages are now nearing completion and we will like to share initial findings and discuss the way forward with the stakeholders,” he added.

Sara Cowan, a member of VSO, expounded on the “initial findings of valuing teachers in The Gambia”. According to her, some of the findings indicated that teachers in the rural areas, complain of late salary payment. She said teachers felt that promotion rates were slowed and they lacked information on upcoming promotions. “Teachers lack awareness on the posting policy, and this impacts on how some viewed posting to rural areas, communication in rural areas, can be a problem - this leaves teachers feeling cut off and left out of the system. Schools in the rural areas lack staff quarters and often lead to teachers living in poor and over scrowded conditions. This went on to impact on teachers motivation levels, when posted in rural areas and parental action and student behaviour,” she noted.

Other speakers at the meeting included Demba Tamba, a head teacher, GTU representative, and EFA Chairperson for Region 6.0