THERE IS good and bad news coming out The Gleaner Editors' Forum on education attended by twelve principals from schools across Jamaica. The good news is that there is now a surplus of well-trained teachers in the system, information which may come as a surprise in the ongoing debate about the reasons for the present unsatisfactory state of education in Jamaica and how the overseas recruitment of our teachers is contributing to it.
The bad news is that this crop of excellent teachers are finding it well nigh impossible to find permanent employment in an education system that is clogged with a number of inefficient and non-performing teachers. Under present guidelines, principals are virtually powerless to remove the dead wood and their continuing frustration with the bureaucracy at the Ministry of Education, which supports this outmoded management model was clearly manifest at the Editors' Forum.
Given the present crisis in education, it is scandalous that well-trained and highly-motivated teachers cannot find jobs while poorly-trained, unmotivated and time-serving teachers are allowed to demoralise the system without the Ministry of Education taking pro-active steps to cull them out.
Although the official entry requirements to teacher colleges are still too low, only four CXC at Grade III, in fact more highly qualified candidates have been applying for admission, allowing officials to select the best. Overall, teaching methods, curriculum and management at teacher colleges have been steadily improving. This combination is turning out young, well-trained teachers, who, because they cannot find permanent jobs, are prime targets for alternative employment, either in Jamaica or abroad. This is a terrible waste of talent, which we can ill afford.
The tragedy is compounded by the fact that the sector of Jamaica's education system that is virtually unregulated by government, namely, community basic schools, are in desperate need of good teachers, skilled in modern pedagogic techniques and able to speak fluently both patois and standard English.
Urgent steps must be taken to purge from official government schools those teachers who are not performing properly. Principals must be given more power to hire and fire but ultimately, education excellence will only be accomplished by a licensing and performance regime which will afford the legal basis for getting the bad eggs out of the system. Recommendations in this regard, put forward by the National Council on Education, need to be implemented and the work of the newly-appointed Early Childhood Education Commission must be speeded up. Once there is a clear vision of how to deal with early childhood education, the surplus of well-trained teachers now available should be encouraged to work in the community basic schools at the same pay scale as permanent jobs in government schools.
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