Ministry’s fairness-driven project to automate teacher transfers, staffing

• The Information Systems Department has identified the requirements needed for system automation without human intervention.

• The department has requested the public education sector to nominate specialists with experience in coordination management, planning, and educational monitoring to assist the team.

In an effort to combat favoritism and nepotism and ensure fairness in addressing school staffing shortages according to the curriculum, the Ministry of Education has launched a project to link teacher transfers and work assignments to electronically calculated budget vacancies, according to Al Rai newspaper.

According to the information, the ministry will implement the project on a trial basis in the temporary secondment program in the coming period. It will be generalized once it is approved and all technical and administrative requirements are met for determining the work center in the teacher record system for all cases ‘appointment, local and external contracting, internal and external transfer, appointment, nominations, return from leave, secondment and transfer to the ministry, administrative transfer to a teacher’.

While the Information Systems Department has identified the requirements needed by its team from the public education and administrative affairs sectors to ensure the automation of the system without human intervention, it has requested the public education sector to nominate specialists with experience in coordination management, planning departments in educational regions, educational stage monitoring, and technical guidance to address the questions and inquiries of the specialized team.

The Information Systems Department stressed the importance of identifying cases where vacancies are manually calculated after the budget system has calculated them according to the curriculum.

It also emphasized the need to clarify the differences between the curriculum-based calculations and the actual on-the-ground situation, as well as what is reflected in the budget program.

For example, the Arabic language subject for the first grade of primary school might be calculated with one teacher per class, while the approved curriculum specifies two classes per teacher.

Additionally, the department noted “the lack of clarity in determining the percentage of need when student density varies from one school to another within the same stage and subject, especially when relying solely on the curriculum.”

The administration requested clarification on the relationship between temporary secondment and the budget, including how vacancies are calculated through it. Additionally, they sought to understand the impact of temporary secondment on internal and external transfers and to clarify the dates for the approval of both the actual and estimated budgets.