Peter EspeutSHAME ON the Jamaica Teachers' Association (JTA) for opposing efforts by the Minister of Education to assist Jamaica's students to make up class time lost to Hurricane Ivan! By all accounts before the storm our primary and secondary students were significantly behind in most if not all subjects. Unless our young people can at least make up for time lost, educational performance this year will slip again, and 'Ivan' will be blamed.
Does not the JTA believe that substandard educational performance is a poor reflection on the professional performance of its members? Apparently not, for the JTA blames everybody else except teachers for low literacy levels in schools and poor examination results: lack of funds, the Ministry of Education, the parents, school boards, and the children themselves.
I have waited in vain for the JTA, which styles itself as a 'professional association', to propose strategies to lift educational performance in Jamaica. The truth is that they are not a professional association but a trade union. A professional association (like the Medical Association of Jamaica or the Bar Association) sets standards for its members to adhere to, and strikes off its register or disbars any of its members shown to fall below a critical standard.
NON-PERFORMING AND
MISBEHAVING TEACHERS
In my more than a decade as a school board chairman I have had come before me many a JTA representative defending non-performing and misbehaving teachers rather than seeking to defend high standards in the profession. There seems to be no behaviour among teachers so low that the JTA will refuse to defend their members for engaging in it. I have never heard of a case where the JTA has struck a teacher off its register for any reason.
The JTA is not a professional association, and should not be treated as such. Never mind Hurricane Ivan; it seems to me that at the very least our present crisis in education requires that students spend more time in the classroom learning, rather than less. The shift system introduced in the 1970s as a temporary strategy to increase secondary enrolment, has lowered academic performance by reducing contact hours between teachers and students. Instead of spending from 8:00 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. in school (6.5 hours/day) as I did in the 1960s, secondary students today typically spend from 7:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. in school (five hours/day). This is a 23 per cent reduction in time at school: 7.5 hours less per week, approximately 90 hours less per term, and 270 hours less per school year; work out how many school days less that is.
The shift system has seriously short-changed our students, and I have consistently opposed it and have advocated its abolition or phasing out. What was intended to be temporary has become a permanent hindrance to the advancement of our young people and a hindrance to national development. The goal of in-creasing secondary enrolment was good, but the implementation of the strategy was poor. What I would have expected to have accompanied the introduction of the shift system in the 1970s was a lengthening of the school year so that the students would not end up with less contact hours. (Can you imagine the howling from the JTA in response to this suggestion?)
Let me be blunt: there is no sector in the Jamaican economy, no occupational group in the Jamaican labour force, that gets as much leave paid time off from work as the teaching profession. They get July and August holidays each year (eight weeks), three weeks at Christmas, two weeks at Easter, 14 days sick leave, 12 days departmental leave, and every five years they can apply for four additional months (17+ weeks) vacation leave all with pay; that is 18 weeks regular leave each year (if they take it all), and 35 weeks in the year out of 52 when they get vacation leave. And the Minister asks them to put in an extra week teaching to make up for Hurricane Ivan, and they squeal like stuck pigs! How unpatriotic, unprofessional and uncaring!
EDUCATIONAL CRISIS
In my view hurricane or no we are in an educational crisis demanding drastic action. In my view every year teaching should be extended by four weeks (all of July, or start school in August) so that our students can get extra contact hours to bring up achievement levels. No extra salaries are required, since Jamaica's teachers are already fully paid for those months. I expect the teachers' union to squeal, but they can't be allowed to hold back the educational progress of our young people.
I would like to challenge the JTA to redeem itself, to set professional standards for its members, and to enforce those standards by ejecting persons not worthy of being in the teaching profession to influence people's children. And I would like to challenge them to put forward serious strategies to raise the academic standards in Jamaica's education system.
Peter Espeut is a sociologist and is executive director of an environment and development NGO.
