Teachers are Concerned About One-year Contracts

According to B.N.T.U. National President Elena Smith, while the process of renewal is underway, a discussion is yet to be had with the Ministry of Education to iron out further details, particularly where it concerns the expiration of the five-year teaching license.

Elena Smith, National President, BNTU

Elena Smith

“At some point there would have had to be some sort of discussion as to what happens after that five-year period.  So for that reason we gave our teachers the advice for them to proceed with the renewal.  There are certain things that we have not fully dealt with in terms of processes, but we are working with those and in the mean time then we can work on hammering out those other issues as we go along. The bulk of the questions have been coming with regards to contracts.  As you are aware, you might be aware, teachers who do not hold a permanent position and are temporary teachers, they sign a contract every year.  There are some secondary schools who are, the staff signs contracts every year.  Even though they’ve been there for umpteen years they still sign a contract every year.  We are saying to our teachers that for this school year, to be safe, we have said to them go ahead and sign the contract because we don’t want to put our teachers in any position where if they don’t sign the contract they can’t be employed and then they are without a job and then you will hear, “because of BNTU I don’t have a job.”