Education Minister Says Marked Improvements Have Been Achieved

Patrick Faber

Faber also reacted to the P.U.P.’s plan to achieve one hundred percent trained teachers. Faber called out Fonseca for reportedly misleading the audience, saying that more than eighty percent of teachers were trained under his tenure as Education Minister.

Patrick Faber, Minister of Education

“We are eighty four percent trained teachers up from 2008. Before we were at something about thirty to thirty two percent or thereabouts. So there is marked improvement and all of those improvements in terms of teacher qualifications came as a result of our government’s investment in the teachers. These are the kinds of initiatives which helped us to train our teachers. These are significant investments so I reject out of hand the P.U.P.s position that all of this money has been wasted. Or is it that they are telling the teachers all that has been invested in their development that now causes them to be able to claim larger salaries because when teachers become more qualified, and we’ve seen where at least fifteen percent of the teacher’s staff has increase their training and are now being paid because they are qualified. The criticism really then is that coming from them that we are wasting money to qualify teacher and if it is that they are saying that the results are not improving it is really a criticism against the teacher and the B.N.T.U. in particular needs to take note of that.”