Enab Baladi – Daraa

Even though Fatima was approved in the regular teacher recruitment program for the 2020-2021 academic year, she was not totally happy to be hired as a full-time teacher after she had served as a substitute teacher for 17 years in schools in Dael city, north of Daraa governorate, with a low salary compared to the high prices and the high cost of living.  

Fatima’s name was approved to work in the complexes of the town of Izraa, and its schools, which are about 14 kilometers (8.6 miles) from her city, Dael. Fatima has to travel far distances every day for work, which constitutes the problem of instability; she will be working in a place far from her residence, Fatima highlighted.

Difficulties facing female teachers in performing their duties

Fatima (a pseudonym for security reasons) summed up to Enab Baladi the problems she will face because of her appointment in a town far from her residence. She said, “We were assigned to teach in areas far from our villages, and our monthly salary will not be sufficient to cover the transportation fees, not to mention the risks that we will be exposed to, due to the poor health situation as a result of the spread of the coronavirus infection, and the deteriorating security condition.”

Also, the deteriorating financial situation and physical fatigue, along with other problems, will reduce the influential role of teachers, which will negatively affect the educational process, according to Fatima.

Fatima called on the teacher recruitment agencies for providing some assistance and understanding the conditions of female teachers and reassigning them in the schools of their village and residence places. 

She pointed out that there are many teaching job vacancies in her village. 

Enab Baladi surveyed the opinions of a group of teachers in Daraa, mostly female teachers, due to the conditions that the city went through, which made many women work as substitute teachers in the education field.

From the opinions of the teachers, Enab Baladi noted that there is a problem facing most of them, which is the difficulty of moving between their places of residence and the sites of the schools in which they are assigned to work.

The teacher will have to get in two or three transportation vehicles and leave the house early to catch up on work and return home late after it ends.

A salary of 36,000 Syrian Pounds (SYP- 14 USD) will not be enough to afford transportation fees, as some female teachers need a thousand or 1,500 SYP (0.5 USD) per day, in addition to other expenses that they may need (one USD is worth 2,000 SYP on average).

Most of the female teachers are married and have children. Therefore, they want to work within the geographical area in which they live, in their villages or towns, or within the neighboring towns as a maximum, and not in areas 30 or 40 kilometers (18.6 and 24.8 miles) from the place of their residence.

Regular teacher recruitment program

On 20 August, the Syrian regime’s Ministry of Education asked its directorates in the Syrian governorates to assign the substitute teachers admitted to the Teacher Recruitment Program at the beginning of the new academic year, pending the issuance of their appointment decisions.

The Ministry of Education released the results of the Regular Teacher Recruitment Program for the substitute teachers, which aims to select 15,000 male and female teachers of a second category. The applicants are to have worked as substitute teachers for no less than 500 days in the primary schools of all directorates of education.

The number of those approved in the teacher selection process reached 15,308 male and female teachers all over Syria. A decision was issued to highlight the names of the newly assigned regular teachers for each governorate separately, and at the level of the educational district or educational complex. The names were distributed equally – 50 % each- between the relatives of those who were killed and fully disabled, and the rest of the applicants.

Enab Baladi reviewed the names of the teachers admitted in the regular teacher selection process in the city of Daraa and monitored their appointment in cities far from their places of residence. The teachers residing in the cities of Abtaa and Dael were appointed in the Izraa educational complex and its affiliated schools.

The city of Dael is about 14 kilometers (8.6 miles) from the city of Izraa, while the city of Abtaa is about six kilometers away (3.7 miles).

Enab Baladi also monitored the appointment of female teachers from the cities of Tafas and Tel Shehab in the schools of Nawa, al-Suhailiyah, and al-Lajat, as the distance between the residence places and workplace starts from about 20 km (12.4 miles) and exceeds 50 km (31 miles).

The Ministry required the newly appointed teachers to update the required identification documents, stipulated in Article 7 of the Basic Law for Workers in the State No. 50 of 2004, within a period not exceeding one month from the date of publishing the names of those approved in the regular teacher recruitment program among the successful ones, at risk of losing the right to be appointed to the announced position.