How Long Will Strike Last?

Dian Maheia

C.E.O. Maheia told News Five the Ministry of Education will continue to monitor the situation since it is not known how long the teacher’s strike will last.

Dian Maheia, C.E.O., Ministry of Education

“I don’t think anyone knows how long this will last. We hope that this will not be something that will be prolonged. We need to keep monitoring. We need to know because everyone needs to know. It is our responsibility to make sure we do what we can for schools to remain open. It is the responsibility of the managing authorities to do their best to ensure that schools are open. We all need to know what is happening. Parents need to know. Here we were thinking we were getting back to school, now we are not. And even what’s the status of our learning packages. So it’s something that really has to be carefully watched so that we can know how we will proceed moving forward.”

Duane Moody

“The reason why I asked that is because I know last year in March when COVID struck, essentially the school year just ended abruptly. With this, is that a possibility too? If this is to be prolonged, we might just have to cut the year short?”

Dian Maheia

“Unfortunately, it is something that we have to consider yes because what else…We need to have a sense of how widespread the strike actually is; how many teachers are actually involved from school to school, from level to level. Data is important. I’ve said it so many times. We need to know exactly what is happening. It can’t be a general vague notion – Oh yes, I think so, oh I heard this. We need to know exactly what’s happening because then we can make informed decisions. That would be an unfortunate decision. It would be a hard thing to do, but it would be something that we’d have to look at – all possibilities.”