Damion Mitchell, Staff Reporter
TEACHERS WHO had abandoned their duties here to accept jobs in New York could be restricted from re-entering the public education system, Senator Noel Monteith, a State Minister in the Ministry of Education Youth and Culture, said on Friday.
Senator Monteith was responding to reports that more than 100 teachers from the United States would be returning home because of immigration and other reasons, among them the failure to produce a 'letter of no objection' from the Ministry of Education which clears them of all financial obligations to the Jamaican Government, in order to gain permanent employment in the United States.
According to Senator Monteith, under the 1980 education regulations teachers could be charged for professional misconduct and the Education Services Commission withdraw their registration for leaving their jobs without properly notifying their respective school board.
"A teacher who is permanently employed should give three months notice coinciding with the end of the semester," said Senator Monteith adding that those who were temporarily employed were required to give at least one month notice.
Attempts to contact Marguerite Bowie, the Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Education yesterday to ascertain the number of recent applications for 'letters of no objection', were unsuccessful. However, Senator Monteith said that only two such applications had been brought to his attention, adding that they are usually dealt with by the Permanent Secretary.
Last year, the Ministry of Education advanced discussions with the Jamaica Teachers' Association (JTA) for teachers who leave the system for more than one year to be regarded as 'new teachers' upon their return, but the matter was not finalised.
...UK still recruits
FEWER THAN four weeks ago Time Plan, a United Kingdom-based agency advertised in the newspapers that it would be recruiting teachers here later this month. Senator Noel Monteith, State Minister of Education said that neither he nor other senior members of the Ministry, with whom he has been having meetings to discuss other educational issues, had been made aware of this.
This new recruitment drive is on despite the fact that it was agreed at a Commonwealth Secretariat meeting in November last year, that agencies must inform the local education ministries of their intentions to recruit.
Contacted on Friday, JTA President Wentworth Gabbidon confirmed this but said the Association was not comfortable with conditions under which teachers leaving the island had to work in the UK.
