Minister says school boards determined 12 terminated teachers

Minister Faber was also asked about the plight of teachers who were dismissed as a result of the merger of three Belize City high schools.  It’s an unfortunate situation says the minister, but that in the process of developing education in the country, the change will bring with it un-pleasantry…and that’s what it is. Since last Tuesday, five teachers each from Maud Williams and Sadie Vernon and two from Excelsior have been dismissed and the teachers have been questioning the grounds for their termination. According to Faber, while the ministry is the proprietor of the schools, it is the Board of Management that determined the twelve teachers that were issued their walking papers.

Patrick Faber, Minister of Education

Patrick Faber

“We made it quite clear that no teacher would be let go based on lack of qualification or qualifications even though at the time, I did lament that indeed the majority of the teachers teaching at these three schools in fact were not professionally trained. But that was not the reason on which we based our decisions. In fact what we did, we looked at the curriculum that is being offered and you saw that in great detail at the press conference and we tried to fit as best as we could the teachers of the sixty-one of them into the delivery of that curriculum. That as you now know caused the issue of us having to displace, as you put it, twelve teachers. But as we said these schools were in fact overstaffed from the beginning. It is unfortunate. I noticed that at least one media house said that my point was that these teachers will be given a pension. Well if they don’t fit the criteria, they can’t be given a pension. The pension act is clear that they must at least have ten years of service and if they don’t fit that bill, then they don’t get that pension.”

Reporter

“You do accept that even though the best intentions are what is being invoked here, there will be those teachers who believe the ministry unfairly removed them right?”

Patrick Faber

“Well yes, I am certain that that will be the case. But correction, it is not the ministry. The Ministry is the proprietor of these schools. The managing authority of these schools is their respective boards and they are the ones who make these decisions. It is just like when we had issues at Sadie Vernon and also at Escuela Mexico, the people were asking us as a ministry to do something. And while we are the proprietors, we don’t make the everyday decisions. Not all of the teachers are being let go so to speak because of the redundancy. In fact, there were some issues that proceeded the move to merge resources, if you will; where teachers were on probation and teachers were asked—I know that this was the case at least in one school—teachers were asked to improve and those improvements did not come and so the board made natural decision to terminate the services of these people. But it is through that there are some who fell at the point of redundancy and have now been displaced so to speak.”

Faber says that they are optimistic because there is twenty-million dollar teacher education improvement project from the Inter- American Development Bank to assist with the training of teachers.