\t\t\tClassroom overcrowding causes stress and health issues for teachers \u2013 Ministry of Education<\/p>\n
The strain caused by overcrowded classrooms has taken a serious toll on teaching staff, with reports that two teachers have suffered miscarriages partly attributed to workload and stress.\u2028\u2028<\/p>\n
This revelation emerged after parents raised ongoing concerns about overcrowding at Marist Brothers Primary School, where some students are reportedly forced to sit on the floor due to insufficient seating.\u2028\u2028<\/p>\n
In response to questions from fijivillage News, the Ministry of Education conducted an official investigation, visiting all 22 classrooms to assess individual year levels and evaluate classroom capacity.<\/p>\n
The Ministry says its findings confirmed that several classrooms do not have enough seating to accommodate all enrolled students, with conditions deteriorating further in recent months.\u2028\u2028<\/p>\n
They say the problem worsened in Term 2 when the absence of five teachers for various reasons led to class reshuffles and increased pressure on both teachers and classroom space.\u2028\u2028<\/p>\n
In one instance, a teacher\u2019s transfer to another school was not followed by a replacement, resulting in her students being redistributed among existing classes, further contributing to overcrowding.\u2028\u2028<\/p>\n
The Ministry says to address these challenges, the Head of School has introduced a new enrolment policy this year limiting class sizes to 35 to 40 students.\u2028<\/p>\n
They say in previous years, class sizes reached as high as 50 to 52 students, placing considerable strain on both teachers and school infrastructure.\u2028\u2028<\/p>\n
The Ministry emphasised the urgent need to expand current facilities or build new classrooms to accommodate growing student numbers.\u2028\u2028<\/p>\n
They add that while plans are underway to increase the school infrastructure budget, financial constraints and limited success in parental fundraising are restricting immediate improvements.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Classroom overcrowding causes stress and health issues for teachers \u2013 Ministry of Education The strain caused by overcrowded…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":183821,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[60],"tags":[108329,97,259,260],"class_list":{"0":"post-183820","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mental-health","8":"tag-classroom-overcrowding-causes-stress-and-health-issues-for-teachers-ministry-of-education","9":"tag-health","10":"tag-mental-health","11":"tag-mentalhealth"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183820","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=183820"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183820\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/183821"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=183820"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=183820"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=183820"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}