THE EDITOR, Sir:
'WASTING TEACHER Talent', the title of your editorial of Thursday, January 29, with regard to principals' powerlessness to remove 'inefficient and non-performing teachers' from the classroom needs to be scrutinised.
Firstly, the Education Regulations, 1981, outline quite clearly the procedures for disciplinary measure, to be taken against a teacher employed at a school that comes under the purview of the Ministry of Education, Youth and Culture. The responsibility to terminate a teacher's contract lies with the school board. A principal, therefore, would fail in his or her attempt to dismiss a teacher.
To my knowledge, most of the attempts to discipline teachers and to terminate their contracts have failed on procedural grounds. That they need to follow the guidelines to a 't' goes without saying. It seems to me that principals and school boards should therefore concern themselves with ensuring that they understand and interpret well the regulations and or seek guidance from their education officers and other Ministry personnel.
In addition, there is much else that principals ought to be doing to ensure that there are fewer marginal performers in our classrooms. I venture to make a few suggestions that principals and boards might wish to consider:
Develop a more visionary leadership style; there is much research to show that where schools are effective, they have become so because of a combination of factors, chief among them is school leadership
Develop a shared vision of what your school community should look like, define the ideal person that you would like to graduate at the end of five or so years
Define the core values that help the school to cohere
Set high personal and academic goals for all students and members of staff and facilitate the achievement of these
Monitor and observe teaching and learning, this is key to ensuring quality
Put in place a strong professional development programme that is responsive to the personal and professional needs of teachers as well as to the institutional needs.
I wish that Boards did not have to take the dismissal route with many of their teachers, but instead the teachers would reflect on their practice and regulate themselves, so that it is they who would decide when to step away from the 'job' because they know that their work is not at an acceptable standard.
I am, etc.,
E. FOSTER ALLEN
Kingston 8
