Teachers up in arms at transfers, B.N.T.U. claims politics
There is trouble brewing for the Ministry of Education just in time for the opening of the academic year. And the Belize National Teacher’s Union has come out in full blast on the issue. According to the B.N.T.U., politics is behind the transfer of numerous primary school teachers around the country. Classes began on Monday for most government high schools and primary schools are expected to open next week. So the timing of the transfers and the dismantling of the high school boards took teachers by surprise. According to B.N.T.U. General Secretary, George Frazer, the Union has fired off a letter to the Minister of Education, Patrick Faber, and has also met with him to discuss the matter.
George Frazer, General Secretary, B.N.T.U.
“We are concerned on two fronts and not just this year., this year what compliments it is that all the government high school boards were dissolved. Some of them still were just half way in their term. So one is the dissolving of all the boards during the holiday time.”
Marion Ali
“It’s the timing of it.”
George Frazer
“Yes, but even more concern to the union, every time after general election, whichever party get in they start to interfere in the government primary schools, especially in the Orange Walk. They felt some of the teachers were more from the other party which lost. They begin to transfer them and really it’s against the rules.”
Marion Ali
“But tell me how does this really affect the delivery of education at these schools?”
George Frazer
“It will affect the delivery of education because normally as the education rule sixty-nine which has to do with transfer, it tells you, you must not transfer a teacher more than every three years unless the teacher asks to be transferred and again when you make a transfer it should benefit both sides. It should benefit the school, maybe the school needs to balance the staff. There may be some staff which have few trained teachers or experienced teachers so yoh want .uplift the standard of the school.”
Marion Ali
“But yoh can’t transfer a teacher in the middle of the year, yoh have to do it during the break before the new school year begins.”
George Frazer
“Well, normally that’s what the rule says. You try do it before and you usually give them at least two months notice. Some of these things were not done. Again, without cause. We met with the Minister and his C.E.O. last week Monday, the eighteenth. We brought in our Orange Walk B.N.TU. president and the vice president from that branch because they are on top of the situation. There are a lot of teachers from government schools in Orange Walk who were transferred. The Minister said that if we can show in any of the cases where they went against the legal requirements then we can bring up the case and they will review it. We gave in some cases and indicated that we need to put a policy in place about how far teachers could go. A week ago a group of teachers from Orange Walk came in and they were meeting with the general manager, Reverend Rudolph Anthony, the general manager of government schools and I think there are some adjustments or reconsiderations but I cannot give you specifically what will happen. Tomorrow the union will have a meeting with it’s teachers in Orange Walk so we hope to get a better picture of what’s going on. The rules are clear with transfer but they are being violated. Some of these cases we’ll have to challenge them probably in court.”
While Frazer could not offer a final figure of how many teachers are being directly affected by the transfers, he did say the Union represents eighty percent of all teachers in the country.
