Education Ministry seeks to implement teacher commission
A proposed amendment to the Education Act is causing conflict among stakeholders. On one hand, the Ministry of Education says the amendment has been on the table for a year but others in the system say not so. The grey areas are the establishment of a Teachers’ Service Commission and the process of consultations. If the ministry has its way, the commission would have the authority to fire and hire and have the final authority regarding any issues concerning teachers. Minister of Education, Patrick Faber, says this move is the future for the education system. This morning Father Noel Leslie and St. John’s College President Frank Garbutt appeared on Open Your Eyes.
Father Noel Leslie
“There is a partnership that exists within the government and the church. The government gave the church responsibilities, the church understood her role and the church performed that role for many years. Now all of this is suddenly being affected. The type of consultation and the type of dialogue that ought to be going on, that’s not happening.”
Patrick Faber, Minister of Education
“Yes, there will be an appointment by the minister of these individuals. But the minister will not go out there and make the selection. These bodies will put forward a nomination and the minister will appoint. That is where people are becoming confused. Yes, the minister will appoint the chair of the commission but that commission will operate separately and independently from the Ministry of Education.”
Frank Garbutt, President, St. John’s College
“In the management structure, we are not paid by the government of Belize. We are paid by the church management, by the proprietor so that now we would be working for a proprietor but our teachers will be working for a teaching service commission. It’s a very difficult thing to see how authority would work in that structure. Also, if an external entity is gonna employ and the church owns its land and buildings, we are asking how is it that a government could unilaterally make the decision then to say you will lose your employment rights but you still own your land and buildings.”
Patrick Faber
“It would take care of the applications that teachers make for study leave and for long leave and for transfers. And the idea is that it would indeed take some of the responsibilities away from management, including government management.”
Frank Garbutt
“Last week Monday is the first time we are hearing about the consultation and that is because we had called to try to organize a managing authorities association. It was in that meeting that the Deputy Chief Education Officer alerted us that these consultations were happening. In fact, I think few of them had even happened before. We were totally unaware that this was occurring. As I said before, we were not even aware that the education act was being so heavily amended that these changes were already definite. And then we were told to go to a link on the Ministry of Education’s website. That is when for the first time I am reading these changes and you could imagine how alarmed we became when we went to see that.”
Faber also says that the group working on the draft document comprised of managing authorities of primary and secondary schools, and the teacher’s union.
