Sun | Oct 5, 2025

‘FIX THE BILL’

Teachers warn Gov’t not to cause more harm than good with law to regulate profession

Published:Tuesday | May 6, 2025 | 10:15 AMSashana Small/Staff Reporter
From left: Dr Mark Smith, president of the Jamaica Teachers’ Association (JTA); Mark Malabver, president-elect; and Leighton Johnson, past JTA president, at a special press conference at the JTA’s head offices on Church Street in downtown Kingston on M
From left: Dr Mark Smith, president of the Jamaica Teachers’ Association (JTA); Mark Malabver, president-elect; and Leighton Johnson, past JTA president, at a special press conference at the JTA’s head offices on Church Street in downtown Kingston on Monday.

Highlighting several provisions in the Jamaica Teaching Council (JTC) Bill that he believes would harm the profession, Jamaica Teachers’ Association (JTA) President Dr Mark Smith has warned that the more than 25,000 members of the organisation are prepared to take decisive action if the bill is passed in its current form.

“Our teachers stand willing and ready to take whatever action to ensure that we register our displeasure with this bill. We believe that there is a need to fix this bill,” he said at a press conference on Monday.

Smith stressed that the JTA supports the “concept of the bill”, which was passed in the Senate recently, and seeks to establish the JTC to oversee the regulation and licensing of teachers. It will next be debated in the Lower House.

But the JTA president said there are a number of concerns that must be addressed “to ensure that we do not heap injustice upon our teachers”.

He warned that the bill, if enacted as is, could do more harm than good.

“We must not make political expediency force us to pass something into law that will hurt people in this country,” Smith said.

A major concern raised by the JTA is the proposed structure of the JTC board. Of the 31 seats, only six are allocated to the JTA – a composition that, Smith says, sidelines educators and contrasts sharply with regulatory boards in other professions.

“Why should the board of the council that regulates the teaching profession be dominated by non-teachers? Why should the teachers, as professionals, be treated differently from other professional councils? We need answers to these questions,” Smith said.

He further noted that there is no provision in the current bill that ensures that the council cannot stand as a quorum if the six JTA representatives are absent.

“There is a possibility [that] some time in the future, if this bill passes, that you could have a sitting of the body, and you will end up with individuals all be seated in that council meeting and not one is a teacher. That is dangerous,” he said.

Smith further contends that the licensing and registration process, which mandates teachers to register every five years and submit police records, will be overly bureaucratic.

“You can imagine with our existing capacity to generate police records, an additional 25,000 will be required. We must not go down the road of creating laws that we cannot enforce,” he said.

He argues that the proposed functions of the JTC will demand additional resources and funding, costs that, he insists, should not be passed on to teachers.

“The cost associated with running this massive apparatus will be equivalent to having [the] Ministry of Education duplicated. Because not only will the council deal with licensing as many professional bodies, but within the various structures of the bill ... they want to take on the role or to conduct professional appraisals. This is usually the remit of a school board and administrators of schools. Why would we want to duplicate this process?” he asked.

Smith criticised the proposed disciplinary powers of the JTC, which would allow for the suspension of teachers’ licences during disciplinary proceedings. This, he said, implies guilt and deprives teachers of their livelihood – contradicting both education regulations and labour laws.

Maintaining that the “bill was not carefully thought out”, Smith said the JTA has long pushed for amendments, but policymakers have ignored their recommendations.

“We are literally asking for consideration that moves beyond just thinking about what we have said, towards actioning what we consider critical components of this bill that need to be amended,” Smith said.

Smith also opposed the proposed $500,000 fine for teaching without being registered or licensed, calling it excessive. He contrasted it with the $250,000 fine for violating the Proceeds of Crime Act, and noted that nurses face a fine of only $1,000 per day for not being licensed.

Finally, he argued that the bill is out of step with the realities facing Jamaica’s education sector, particularly the teacher shortage and ongoing migration.

“We have to be careful about the arduous systems that we are attempting to establish that will further place pressure on our existing teachers,” he said.

He shared that principals are still struggling to find teachers, especially those in the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.

“We demand that this bill be fixed, and we stand willing to support whatever is necessary, to engage in any type of discourse, to have a bill that protects our children, that empowers and adds agency and autonomy to our teachers as we seek to professionalise the teaching service,” he said.

sashana.small@gleanerjm.com