Campaign urges gov’t to secure salaries of private schools teachers

AMMAN — Members of the Stand Up with the Teacher Campaign on Sunday visited the Ministry of Education, calling for the government’s interference to secure the salaries of teachers working in 280 private schools.

“There are hundreds of teachers working in 280 private schools who haven’t received their salaries since February of this year,” said one of the campaign members Nareeman Shawaheen.

Shawaheen was one of around 25 private school female teachers, who visited the Department of Private Education on Sunday, to demand that the ministry implement its promises to tighten the supervision of private schools that are not committed to transferring teachers’ salaries to banks.

“We hope that the ministry would expedite the announcement of which schools have received a licence renewal and which have been denied renewal before the Eid Al Adha holiday, so that parents and teachers know how to plan their future and the future of their families,” Shawaheen told The Jordan Times.

She added that “we are hopeful the government will increase its surveillance over these schools to ensure that teachers are paid”.

“We are going through exceptional times and most people are suffering from the COVID-19 ramifications and we have hundreds of teachers who haven’t received any kind of salary since February,” added Maali Qutishat, another campaign member.

The number of private schools in the Kingdom, according to Qutishat, is 1,511.

“We want from the Ministry of Education to confirm whether the schools that were licensed last year and did not transfer the teachers’ salaries to the bank would be licensed for the next academic year or not,” Qutishat told The Jordan Times.

The Jordan Times was unable to reach the Director of the Department of Private Education Fayez Maarif on Sunday despite repeated attempts to contact him via phone.

The Stand up with the Teacher Campaign was launched in 2015 by a group of women teachers from Irbid in the private sector with the aim of creating a legislative system to protect teachers’ wages in the private sector that have been violated for years, according to a statement from the campaign organisers.

The campaign, which was supported by National Committee for Pay Equity [NCPE], seeks to claim the rights of male and female teachers, as it has made several campaigns since its establishment, including “Our salary at the bank and not under the table” in 2017, the press release said.