How Will Renewal of Teaching License be Administered?

Elena Smith

So what will teachers do now that the ministry has sent out the memorandum while they are on summer vacation?  According to Executive Secretary Keisha Young-Flowers, B.N.T.U. is prepared to support its membership in whatever is decided upon regarding the matter since there is nothing in place to administer a renewal process.

Senator Elena Smith, National President, B.N.T.U.

“You send out these things to our teachers during a vacation period, you tell them that you must renew and you are saying to them that you must bring along with you records of your CPD hours that you’ve done before.  The ministry does not have accurate records of our teachers’ CPD hours and so how do you determine then that I have maintained my license by acquiring one hundred and twenty hours when you don’t have the records?  The other concern that we have is that our teachers are expected to do these CPD hours over the five-year period, but how do they get to do those hours?  The ministry provides workshops during the summer holiday for two weeks.  That does not cater for all of our teachers.  Managements do not do as many workshops throughout the year as well, so how would these teachers then arrive at a hundred and twenty hours when the persons who are responsible, the ministry nor the management provides opportunities for them to gain a hundred and twenty hours?”

Keisha Young-Flowers

Keisha Young-Flowers, Executive Secretary, B.N.T.U.

“A teacher visited me this morning, because I want to highlight this issue of how these CPDs are logged.  A teacher visited our office this morning, he went in to do his renewal and the teacher is responsible to provide a list of all the CPDs they have done and incredibly enough that teacher’s license number is not even correct on that list provided by the ministry.  Now if that process has not been clarified then what are we supposed to expect for thousands of other teachers who are out there who have been doing CPDs for many years?  What are we going to be seeing when they start visiting the Ministry of Education and trying to get their list of CPDs that they have completed?  It’s really; I don’t even know how to describe it.  The frustration that these teachers will have in the next few days is tremendous and like the president rightly said, we will support them.  Whatever they decide to do on this matter, we will be there for them.”