Beninese teachers dismissed in 2019 for boycotting a diagnostic evaluation have just been reinstated in the civil service. At the Council of Ministers on Wednesday 18 January, the executive decided to lift the sanctions imposed on them.
A total of 305 primary and secondary school teachers will be dismissed from the civil service in December 2019. The reason was that they refused to participate in the diagnostic evaluation initiated by the government for them. But these 113 primary school teachers and 192 secondary school teachers have just been given a smile because they have been reinstated into the civil service to continue their careers.
Indeed, in 2019, the government of Benin had initiated a process to assess the intellectual and professional knowledge of kindergarten, primary and general secondary school teachers in order to clearly identify levels of competence and capacity building needs. This is part of the implementation of a plan to improve the quality of education in Benin. Despite all the explanations of the executive at the time on the merits of the measure for the benefit of our education system, some of them had decided to boycott the sessions organised. As a result, the government had ended their contract. After being dismissed, these teachers have continued to appeal to the government for clemency, particularly through the leaders of the trade union centres and confederations. After much reflection and especially because of the social aspect of the case, the grand jury (the Council of Ministers) agreed on 18 January to their reintegration into the civil service.
In addition, apart from this lifting of the sanction, the government is initiating the process of reinstatement of contractual state employees who had participated in the diagnostic evaluation and who had been able to obtain an average of 10/20. They will therefore become state officials with all the associated benefits.
