Gov’t. introduces licensing for teachers
There has been a lot of publicity lately given to the issue of how teachers and students will make up the school days lost to Hurricane Keith. But while the question of whether to work over the Christmas holidays has been a controversial one, a far more important issue has barely been mentioned–that of teacher licensing. Ann-Marie Williams reports.
Ann-Marie Williams, Reporting
The Teaching professional is soon to receive first class honours when it embarks on a countrywide programme to train teachers for their licenses. The idea to license teachers as professionals started 17 years ago when the government and the teaching community started reviewing the school rules. That review has resulted with a new handbook of policies and procedures for the schools signed by Education Minister Cordel Hyde.
According to Chief Executive Officer in the Ministry of Education Dr. Dorian Barrow says the principal reason for licensing teachers has to do with the standardization of qualification and experience and how that relate to pay scales.
Dorian Barrow, CEO, Ministry of Education
“Everybody who are currently in the teaching system will be given a provisional licence. The licence will be for one year. During that year we expect that the application should be made, reviewed and people will be stratified in terms of their various licence. The minimum requirement for licences at the primary level is that you have some form of training. We’re using as the minimum requirement for a full licence that you have successfully completed teacher education at the level two, level. Those teachers who went to school before the level two was around, who did what we used to call the two plus one, which was three years of training, will be given full licence.”
For a secondary school teacher to qualify for a full license the minimum requirement is an equivalent to an Associate’s Degree in the subject area in which he or she teaches, plus what is equivalent to one year professional education training or one hundred and twenty clock hours of training in addition to their educational qualifications.
Dorian Barrow
?People who don?t have that requirement will be issued temporary licence and they have five years in which to meet the requirements. If at the end of that time they haven?t met the requirements, their situation is reviewed in terms of why they didn?t meet the requirements, what kinds of intervention can we do to facilitate them, then they are given an extension. During that extension, it would be expected that they would meet the requirement.?
According to Barrow government has already done its homework to cater for the growing numbers of teachers in the profession.
Dorian Barrow
?In our analysis of the system, we have about three thousand pre-school, primary and secondary teachers in the system. In terms of the primary school, we have about sixty-four percent of that amount, which is a little over twelve hundred teachers, that we believe have the requirements for full licensing. So there is an urgent need to train the additional eight hundred or so primary school teachers. In terms of the secondary schools, there is a little…we have about eight hundred or so teachers in the secondary schools, of which a little less than fifty percent have the requirements.?
Barrow explicitly states that The Ministry of Education will make a contractual agreement with the University of Belize come September 2001 to train these teachers. Although government will co-finance the training through The Belize Education Sector Improvement Programme, which is a World Bank funded project, teachers will be expected to meet a small cost of their training.
Monies aside, teachers at the primary and secondary level have their concerns.
Cynthia Reneau, Principal, St. Mary’s Primary School
?One of the things that we have to do is to get in one hundred and twenty clock hours of training within that five years. I don?t know for all the teachers in Belize if that?s possible. I don?t think enough programmes are offered where the students can get that amount of training in. For instance, if a teacher is attending U.B. doing a bachelor?s course, that is not considered part of the training. That teacher would have to get extra training to qualify for that one hundred and twenty clock hours of training?
Kathleen Flowers, Teacher, Gwen Lizarraga High School
?We have specialized areas. Take for instance the technical areas at high schools, where training and professional development for that is very limited in Belize. Our concern is what will happen to our teachers in those areas? Where will we find that training accessibility for them? Who will offer these courses? How will government look at training teachers who are in specialized areas where it is not available at our training institutions? For example, U.B. does not have a wide variety and a diversity of courses. So that leads us with a vacuum where teachers don?t know where they?re going to turn to and nothing has been structured and sent down through the Ministry of Education as to where you can turn.?
Laura Baptist, Vice-Principal, E.P. York High School
?This is one way we can have a reason for terminating their service. Part of the rule talks about supervision, and supervision will bring about accountability, so instead of terminating someone?s service for being subjective, you will more look at their performance and use an objective measurement in order to weed them out of the classroom.?
President of the National Teacher’s Union John Pinelo, says this new licensing exercise promises to restore much needed confidence in the teaching profession.
John Pinelo, President, BNTU
?Teachers will need to really upgrade themselves. We do have some teachers, not everybody, who are satisfied with what they have in qualifications. But teaching is a dynamic thing, we don?t sit there and stay for years without doing anything, you have to be updated, you have to keep current, especially with the most recent developments in education. And so we need to be more competitive. As it is with this free flow of services and goods, it will mean that if we do not update ourselves and keep ourselves competitive, other people can come to Belize and really replace us. So it is very important that we try to do whatever we can to improve ourselves and be competitive with the rest of the region.?
And what happens if teachers don’t want to improve themselves?
Dorian Barrow
“What the new scheme is saying is that if you don’t have a license you can’t teach.”
Ann-Marie Williams Reporting for News 5.
