The return to official schools and high schools is very close. It depends on the government’s decisions next week. Until then, the teachers’ associations’ strike will continue, and the associations are supposed to issue a decision to extend the strike. However, the coming week is supposed to bring good news to the parents of the students, as the date for their children’s return to classes is approaching.
Professors’ earnings
More than a month and a half after the strike, which has been extended weekly since the beginning of January, next Monday will be crucial, as confirmed by Al-Modon’s sources in the teachers’ associations. As it is assumed that teachers will receive a transportation allowance equivalent to five liters of petrol for each working day, in the cabinet session. Teachers’ associations have received promises that this requirement will be implemented and that all public sector employees will benefit from it. This means that the cabinet session is pivotal to the possibility of students returning to their schools.
In addition to the aforementioned transportation allowance, the sources add that the teachers will receive a productivity allowance in Lebanese pounds from the government, in addition to the productivity allowance in dollars from the Ministry of Education ($300 for the previous three months and $125 per month for the next four months). The previous cabinet session approved 1,500 billion pounds to pay productivity allowances to public sector employees, and the decision did not exclude teachers, even though they were supposed to receive productivity allowances in dollars. Consequently, the government is supposed to either amend the text of the decision to exclude teachers, or confirm their inclusion in the productivity allowance in Lebanese pounds. In the event that they are excluded, there are solutions proposed to pay the productivity allowance in Lebanese pounds from school funds. In both cases, they will receive a production allowance in dollars and pounds.
Teacher’s Day
According to the sources, there are proposals to create a special platform for public sector employees to set a special exchange rate for them. However, until it is established, teachers’ salaries will continue to be paid at an exchange rate that is about twenty percent lower than the exchange rate announced by the Central Bank. That is, the “basket of gains” of the links for the teachers will include: a fair transportation allowance in the face of the high fuel price, a productivity allowance in dollars, and another in Lebanese pounds, amid promises that teachers will receive the aforementioned $300 productivity allowance on Teacher’s Day on the ninth of March. That is, the average total income of each professor will reach about thirty million pounds. Although this amount has become insignificant and does not provide a decent living for the professor, in view of the high exchange rate of the dollar, it is the best possible in the current circumstances, the sources say.
Teachers’ opinion poll
The sources add that there are discussions between the state employees’ cooperative and the government to raise the hospitalization and medical allowance. The cooperative needs about 8 thousand billion pounds to cover hospitalization (five thousand billion), medical care and grants (three thousand billion). During the meeting of the delegation of the Progressive Socialist Party, headed by Representative Akram Chehayeb, with the Director General of the cooperative, Yahya Khamis, it was reached to develop a road map to secure funds and stop the extortion of private hospitals for the patients of the cooperative.
The sources confirm that the teachers’ associations will carry these gains to the teachers and start a referendum for their opinion next Tuesday, that is, after the Council of Ministers session, which is supposed to approve the transportation allowance, which is equivalent to five liters of petrol. This solution, which will be presented to the teachers, will be tantamount to “linking a dispute with the government and the Ministry of Education,” to return to teaching for a month, and in the event that any promise is breached, the teachers’ ties will return and the strike will be announced again.
Cancellation of mid-year exams
The sources pointed out that the return of students to classes will not be before Monday, the sixth of March, because the next week will be decisive. After the cabinet session, the associations will invite general assemblies to seek the opinion of the professors, and the results will be issued at the end of the week. Consequently, the ball is now in the court of Prime Minister Najib Mikati to approve the teachers’ associations’ demands.
In the event that teachers return to teaching in the second week of March, public school students will learn about fifty days, until the second half of June, as mid-year exams will not be held. The sources indicate that these exams will be canceled so as not to waste more days of teaching on the students, and that the exams at the end of the year will suffice.
The sources add that the matter is different with regard to students of the official certificate at the secondary level. The lessons will stop at the end of May, to set the date for the official exams at the end of June and the beginning of July, after reducing the courses of the lessons, which they will be tested with. However, the realization of these accounts depends on the realization of the simple demands raised by the teachers’ associations, and the absence of disturbances in the coming months, as a result of breaking any of the promises. Formal education is in clinical death, as are all sectors of the state.
