THE FIRST of 300 teachers to be laid off by the Ministry of Education will receive their notices next month.
The cuts are part of the Ministry's controversial rationalisation programme.
In a press briefing at his Heroes Circle, Kingston, office yesterday, Education Minister Burchell Whiteman made it clear plans would go ahead despite widescale opposition from the Jamaica Teachers' Association (JTA), which represents the majority of the island's 22,000 teachers.
Last month, JTA executive member Eric Downie warned that while the association was trying to prevent a head-on collision with government, it would go to court if necessary to defend the teachers it represents.
"We operate under a law, under the Education Act. And if government removes any teacher from the system illegally we are going to the courts to settle the matter," he said.
If any teacher is removed illegally, the government would become defendants in a class action lawsuit because the same loophole that may be used to remove one teacher here, exists elsewhere in the system, he said. Once it is successfully used at one point, it can be used elsewhere.
While acknowledging transition was not easy, Minister Whiteman told The Gleaner the changes would result in better quality education and in freeing up resources in the long run.
"While there has been a lot of concern about and a lot of emphasis on the likely dislocation of 300 or so teachers who may not find a place in the system when the whole exercise is over, we should also bear in mind the emphasis is on good order and on quality and efficiency," he said.
Maintaining that a ratio of one teacher to 35 students was the best way to go, the Minister explained the Ministry had seen improvement in the teacher/student ratio, dropping from 1/55 ratio at the start of the 1990s to almost 1/35. In addition, just about 80 per cent of schools are at the 1/35 ratio, Minister Whiteman remarked.
"While there are countries with a better ratio than 1/35, all the research evidence suggests to us that 1/35 at the primary school is a workable, manageable and affordable ratio for Jamaica."
Mr. Whiteman said the system made it impossible for teachers to be transferred from overstaffed to understaffed schools because teachers, unlike civil servants, were employed to a board of management and could not be transferred at will.
