Hundreds of Teachers Cut Due to Not Having Proper Training
Patrick Faber
There are several schools for which the new academic year has already started, but most primary schools across the country won’t start classes until September fifth. Most of the education system programs, such as the three hundred dollars subsidy for students, are in place to ensure that children are back in school, what about teachers. Early this year at an education conference, the ministry announced that some one thousand, three hundred teachers, who failed to acquire pedagogical training, will not be allowed back in the classrooms at the start of the 2016 school year. According to Education Minister Patrick Faber, teachers simply did not heed to the law.
Patrick Faber, Minister of Education
“I would not be able to give you the specific number right off, but we did carry out that exercise and in fact, we did do an appeal even. So that after the decision was made using the criteria as we had signaled we would do—and please I want to remind people that the vetting committee that dealt with that was not only the Ministry of Education. While ultimately, according to the law, the decision to grant the permit lies with the Chief Education Officer, we tried to make the decision-making body as wide as possible and we included a representative from the B.N.T.U.; a representative from the General Managers Association, a representative from the Association of Principals from Secondary School. So they were the ones who vetted these applications and gave the results. Now there were some who felt that their case was not properly heard or that the committee may have missed something and there was a process for them to make that appeal to the same committee to review it and that process as I understand it is being completed. I will say this without wanting to start a quarrel; there were some teachers who did not do what they were required to do. I have had many come to me who are pleading for some special consideration and outside of the criteria that has been set. Because that criteria, people should remember that is special consideration because strictly speaking, the law said that that if you don’t have it by this time, you just don’t have it. But we introduced the special permit to cater to this kind of situation and yet there are some who honestly did not do anything. And I am sorry to sound unsympathetic, but that is the reality.”
Faber says that there are a number of persons who hold provisional license and have not been teaching because of the unavailability of jobs.
