Sat Ma­haraj

One of the pos­i­tive as­pects of the con­tro­ver­sial Ryan Re­port, is the fo­cus on the school sys­tem, the role of the teacher and the re­struc­tur­ing of the Teach­ing Ser­vice Com­mis­sion.We fo­cus first on the Teach­ing Ser­vice Com­mis­sion and its re­la­tion­ship with the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion. The TSC and the po­lit­i­cal head of the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion with re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to the Cab­i­net and the peo­ple, ap­pear to have a quite dif­fer­ent vi­sion for ed­u­ca­tion. And this is a ma­jor prob­lem that af­fects the chil­dren of the na­tion.

The Min­is­ter is an­swer­able to the na­tion but we have the dis­tinct im­pres­sion that poli­cies enun­ci­at­ed by those ac­count­able to the peo­ple have no in­flu­ence on a Com­mis­sion that was ap­point­ed by the non-elect­ed head of the coun­try–the pres­i­dent.It is not sur­pris­ing that the Ryan Re­port, at page 61, rec­om­mends: "The Teach­ing Ser­vice Com­mis­sion should be re­struc­tured and re­named the Ed­u­ca­tion­al Ser­vice Com­mis­sion (ESC) to re­flect the new struc­ture."

We have al­so main­tained that the De­nom­i­na­tion­al Boards (church schools) are out-per­form­ing the gov­ern­ment schools al­though these schools gen­er­al­ly have more teach­ing staff and an­cil­lary sup­port than the de­nom­i­na­tion­al schools. In a full-page analy­sis in the News­day on Sun­day, April 7, re­porter An­dre Ba­goo point­ed out: "

Ac­cord­ing to un­pub­lished Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion sta­tis­tics col­lat­ed by civ­il ser­vants, which have been ob­tained by Sun­day News­day, a large num­ber of teach­ers are util­is­ing oth­er en­ti­tle­ments they have dur­ing term time, name­ly oc­ca­sion­al leave and sick leave. The most re­cent fig­ures avail­able–for the years 2011 and 2010–show a trend of more and more teach­ers tak­ing leave."

And in bold type, he high­light­ed the fol­low­ing: "Teach­ers at de­nom­i­na­tion­al schools seem less in­clined to take leave. For ex­am­ple, in 2011, 137 out of a sam­ple of 1,562 de­nom­i­na­tion­al teach­ers, or 9 per cent, took 14 days oc­ca­sion­al leave. For the same pe­ri­od, 1,257 gov­ern­ment school teach­ers out of a sam­ple of 4,821 Gov­ern­ment school teach­ers, or 26 per cent, took the same amount of leave."

The Ryan Re­port rec­om­mends that a na­tion­al coun­cil for stan­dards in teach­ing be es­tab­lished and not­ed: "There were some who felt that some teach­ers were not 'on task' in the class­room with in­di­ca­tors of poor prepa­ra­tion for teach­ing and poor class­room man­age­ment skills. There were oth­ers who felt that there was gen­er­al ap­a­thy and dis­in­ter­est­ed­ness by teach­ers in the progress of stu­dents and their gen­er­al wel­fare and un­will­ing­ness to co-op­er­ate with the ad­min­is­tra­tion for the gen­er­al good of the school com­mu­ni­ty."

The re­port sug­gests: "The Na­tion­al Coun­cil for Pro­fes­sion­al Stan­dards in Teach­ing should be the self-reg­u­la­to­ry arm of the teach­ing pro­fes­sion and should have as its re­mit not on­ly the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion, reg­is­tra­tion and re­new­al of li­cences of teach­ers for two pe­ri­ods of five years each be­fore be­ing tenured, but should de­vel­op a code that de­fines es­sen­tial val­ues, at­ti­tudes and be­liefs and Coun­cil will en­sure that con­tin­u­al pro­fes­sion­al de­vel­op­ment is a pri­or­i­ty and will in­de­pen­dent­ly mon­i­tor the stan­dards of teach­ing in the school sys­tem."

Trinidad and To­ba­go Uni­fied Teach­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (TTUTA) is per­ceived as a body that rep­re­sents teach­ers, not on­ly in salaries and work­ing con­di­tions, but al­so im­prov­ing pro­fes­sion­al train­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties for its 14,000 fee pay­ing mem­bers.

To date we know of no pro­gramme or­gan­ised by this pro­fes­sion­al body to raise the com­pe­tences of its mem­bers so that they could bet­ter de­liv­er ed­u­ca­tion to the chil­dren, but they were quick to re­spond to Ba­goo's News­day ar­ti­cle and de­fend ex­ces­sive leave-tak­ing by teach­ers at "gov­ern­ment" schools.

Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary of TTUTA Mr Pe­ter Wil­son says: "But in any case teach­ing is be­com­ing more and more stress­ful. For in­stance, there are in­creas­ing dif­fi­cul­ties in deal­ing with stu­dents. There is an is­sue where a mi­nor­i­ty of stu­dents are cre­at­ing is­sues which call for sup­port and mea­sures to pro­tect teach­ers them­selves from vi­o­lence."

Wil­son said: "Teach­ers have to face phys­i­cal con­di­tions at schools that in­clude di­lap­i­dat­ed build­ings. There are al­so a lot of health and safe­ty is­sues. Some schools are in­fest­ed with rats, fleas, pi­geons. School is be­com­ing a more haz­ardous place in terms of phys­i­cal safe­ty and health."There is al­so an is­sue with se­cu­ri­ty in school...It is be­com­ing a more stress­ful place, and that could be a rea­son as well for teach­ers seek­ing more leave."

But we of the Ma­ha Sab­ha, wish to point out that all schools and even our homes, are sub­ject­ed to the in­fes­ta­tion of rats, fleas and some­times pi­geons. This we con­sid­er to be a bo­gus ex­cuse.Mr Wil­son, in de­fend­ing gov­ern­ment schools teach­ers' ab­sence from the class­room, says: "They have these leave en­ti­tle­ments and one would want to min­imise teach­ers seek­ing leave, but these are en­ti­tle­ments. It de­pends on the sit­u­a­tion," he said.

We wish to again point out that "leave en­ti­tle­ment" is part of the work­ing con­di­tions of­fered to teach­ers and all oth­er work­ers. Sick leave is there to be tak­en when a teacher is sick, and ca­su­al leave is when there is an emer­gency that needs at­ten­tion of the teacher.