This year, the educational reality in the official sector will not return to what it was before COVID-19 and the economic crisis, as recommended by UNESCO and educational bodies, according to expert reports on educational loss. Teacher unions have suggested in their consultations with the Ministry of Education to cover only four teaching days a week, allowing teachers to seek additional resources outside of official education. In exchange, they are demanding to double the productivity allowance to begin a school year free of strikes, with variations in registration and preparatory work dates between basic and secondary education. The consultations appeared to rely once again on circumventing the teacher's situation and adopting piecemeal, non-radical solutions (endorsing a new salary scale), in accordance with the conditions of the funding bodies that pressure to operate schools at the lowest possible costs, as reported in "Al-Akhbar."
The Association of Secondary School Teachers, according to the association's secretary, Haidar Khalifa, has insisted on a demand to double the productivity allowance, which does not mean doubling it just twice, that is, $600 instead of $300, but rather that the differences between job categories need to be taken into consideration; the productivity allowance in secondary education should differ from that in basic education and be closer to that in higher education.
While the association awaits positive responses and the translation of their proposals in the Cabinet, they have called for the commencement of registration and preparatory work after mid-September, with the new academic year beginning in early October. For basic education, registration is expected to start on September 9 and the academic year in its last week. Hussein Jawad, head of the Association of Teachers in Basic Education, clarified that the difference between 5 teaching days (30 classes) and 4 teaching days (28 classes) does not exceed two classes, noting that students in official education are taught 26 classes a week due to the lack of teachers for arts and sports in the majority of schools. However, it should be noted that prior to the crisis, the duration of a teaching class was 55 minutes, not 45 minutes as it is today. Regarding the productivity allowance, the association has requested that it be $600. As for the official school textbook this year, Jawad ruled out that the Educational Center would print the textbook for the same reasons as in previous years, including the reluctance of publishing houses to participate in the tender for the book launched by the center, according to "Al-Akhbar."
