Manama: Bahrain has denied online reports that it was recruiting 805 Egyptian teachers for the new academic year.
“The Ministry of Education did not put out any ad in any newspaper to recruit teachers from Egypt or any other Arab country,” the ministry said in a statement.
“The ministry is always keen on hiring teachers from Bahrain under a selection of applications based on the merit system.
“The ministry did put ads in the local media in March to recruit teachers in specific specialities for the 2014-2015 academic year and conducted interviews and tests for the applicants. Such procedures are made every year as the ministry endeavours to replace foreign teachers whose contracts expired by Bahraini teachers.”
The report first posted by an Egyptian website was later widely circulated on social media networks.
However, the ministry, on Monday, insisted that it was not true and stressed that contacts with Egyptian teachers are made only when there is a need to fill in vacant posts “to ensure that schools are not affected by the non-existence of teachers,”
“All contacts are made through the cultural attaché in the Egyptian capital Cairo who receives a preliminary list of potential teachers from the Egyptian ministry of education,” the ministry said.
“Bahrain screens the applications to ensure that they meet the requirements of the Civil Service Bureau regarding the hiring of teachers and accordingly conducts interviews to select the most competent applicants,” the ministry said.
Thousands of Arab teachers, mainly from Egypt, have taught in the various schools of Bahrain and the other Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries for decades.
However, with increasing applications from locals, the number of Arab expatriates has been decreasing steadily.
