Speaking up for every educator

NUPPEZ engages government and education authorities through press statements, dialogue sessions, collective bargaining and direct meetings with the Ministry of Education and the Teaching Council of Zambia. These are the positions we have taken and the actions behind them.

1. Teacher salaries and the cost of living

NUPPEZ has raised the alarm repeatedly over what rising prices are doing to teachers’ take-home pay. Teachers are not going into debt because they cannot manage money. They are going into debt because their wages buy less every year.

The high cost of living continues to erode the take-home pay of civil servants, leading many into debt. This is a systemic issue that must be addressed through collective bargaining, not parliamentary point-scoring.

Victor Muyumba, NUPPEZ President

2. Education quality and learner standards

NUPPEZ backs government efforts to raise the quality of education. We welcomed the removal of automatic progression for Grade 7 pupils and have called for competitive cut-off points to be reintroduced, which would reward hard work and ease overcrowding at secondary level.

We support free education, but quality must not be sacrificed for quantity. Standards must be maintained for the benefit of all learners.

Victor Muyumba, NUPPEZ President

3. Late-coming and school discipline

NUPPEZ has asked the Ministry of Education for clear, workable guidance on late-coming pupils. We support keeping pupils in class rather than sending them home. We also want structured corrective measures written into the guidance, because without them the policy costs teaching time and classroom order.

4. Teacher housing

The recruitment of more than 40,000 teachers is the largest single intake this country has seen, and NUPPEZ welcomed it. Housing has not kept pace. Most of those teachers were posted to rural and peri-urban areas where there is nowhere adequate for them to live. We are asking government to treat teacher accommodation as urgent.

5. TCZ practising licences

NUPPEZ took members’ concerns about practising licence fees to the Teaching Council of Zambia. We won deadline extensions and we continue to push for payment by instalment.

6. Union unity and the MORETA initiative

Zambia’s teaching unions are fragmented, and government negotiates with each of them separately. NUPPEZ supports efforts to bring them together. One coordinated voice at the table gets more for teachers than five competing ones.