Ucill Cam­bridge

Gen­er­al sec­re­tary of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Uni­fied Teach­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (TTUTA) Pe­ter Wil­son is dis­put­ing that more than 10 per cent of the na­tion's teach­ers may be guilty of ab­sen­teeism.

Ac­cord­ing to the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion's 2012 re­port on teacher ab­sen­teeism, over 10 per cent of the na­tion's school­teach­ers–1,100 sec­ondary school­teach­ers and 443 pri­ma­ry school­teach­ers–have been re­port­ed by their schools' prin­ci­pal as hav­ing stayed away from school il­le­gal­ly, that is out­side of their le­git­i­mate­ly en­ti­tled days off, with­out any ap­proved re­quests, and with­out be­ing on of­fi­cial school or min­istry-ap­proved busi­ness.

The num­ber of days teach­ers stayed away from school in some in­stances num­bered more than 100. There is an es­ti­mat­ed 195 school days in a year.These 1,543 teach­ers will be in­ves­ti­gat­ed and based on in­ves­ti­ga­tions, may be charged for mis­con­duct ac­cord­ing to the Teach­ing Ser­vice Com­mis­sion (TSC) pol­i­cy guide­lines.Speak­ing with the Sun­day Guardian, Wil­son said he dis­putes those fig­ures "out­right."

"I don't be­lieve those fig­ures and I don't ac­cept them," he said."If the fig­ures were that high the min­istry would have in­ter­vened and done some­thing about it al­ready. Teach­ers would have been brought up on charges. As it is, I have not seen the fig­ures, but I would have to ex­am­ine those fig­ures and see what they mean," he said.

Time off for teach­ers

He point­ed out that teach­ers are al­lowed 28 le­git­i­mate days off out­side of school and pub­lic hol­i­days. "Re­mem­ber teach­ers are le­git­i­mate­ly en­ti­tled to time off. They are al­lowed 14 days sick leave, 14 ca­su­al days and a bank day every month."

A whole day?

"No, two hours, and some­times that de­pends; if you are a teacher in To­co but you live in San­gre Grande you can­not be ex­pect­ed to com­plete your busi­ness in two hours."He said there was al­so al­lowance for ex­tend­ed sick leave. This time is giv­en, with the nec­es­sary med­ical doc­u­ments and with­out pay.

Loss of teach­ing time­for stu­dents

He said TTUTA has had no in­di­ca­tion that the fig­ures were any­where near what is be­ing tout­ed.In any event, he said teacher ab­sen­teeism al­so has to be looked at from the point of view of lost teach­ing time, and point­ed out a num­ber of in­stances where stu­dents were de­prived of class time through no fault of teach­ers.

"There have been in­stances where, be­cause of the di­lap­i­dat­ed con­di­tion or for oth­er rea­sons like pi­geons and oth­er in­fes­ta­tions plagu­ing schools, class­es could not be held and stu­dents could not be taught."He said Mal­ick Sec­ondary, which had no school for an en­tire term, was an ex­am­ple of this. Al­so, he said teach­ers have been tak­en away from the class­room to at­tend Con­tin­u­ous As­sess­ment train­ing, "and that is due to con­tin­ue some­time soon."

He added that when teach­ers be­come preg­nant and have to take ma­ter­ni­ty leave, they are not re­placed."So if you want to re­al­ly look at teacher ab­sen­teeism it is not just about when teach­ers stay away, but it's about the loss of teach­ing time for stu­dents, and those is­sues I have point­ed out are be­yond the con­trol of teach­ers.

Even fund-rais­ing. Teach­ers have had to take time away from teach­ing to have fund-rais­ers so that the school can raise mon­ey to sup­ply some of the ba­sic items that the min­istry does not. Toi­let pa­per, sta­tionery sup­plies, schools have to pro­vide that on their own."

Hav­ing said that, he re­peat­ed that the min­istry's fig­ure is too high."Ten per cent is a lot. We have dealt with mis­con­duct is­sues re our mem­bers, re­ports would have come from the min­istry and the Teach­ing Ser­vice Com­mis­sion, which is the on­ly body au­tho­rised to take ac­tion, would have brought charges against our mem­bers. But that has nev­er been more than prob­a­bly less than one per cent of the pop­u­la­tion," Wil­son said.

The silent min­istry

Wil­son's point sup­ports the po­si­tion of TSC chair­man Hy­acinth Guy, who told the Sun­day Guardian that teacher ab­sen­teeism in the na­tion's school was now "epi­dem­ic" and that the min­istry, which has the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty through its per­ma­nent sec­re­tary, has not been pro­vid­ing the TSC with the in­for­ma­tion it needs to bring charges against delin­quent teach­ers.This, in spite of how vo­cal Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion Tim Gopeesingh has been on the is­sue of teacher ab­sen­teeism.

Min­is­ter Gopeesingh, who has gone on record as call­ing the sit­u­a­tion "to­tal­ly un­sat­is­fac­to­ry," said he would in­tro­duce "rad­i­cal" mea­sures to deal with teacher ab­sen­teeism and to in­crease the amount of teach­ing time at the na­tion's pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary schools.Then in Feb­ru­ary, dur­ing a tour of the Cunu­pia Sec­ondary School, Gopeesingh used the in­sti­tu­tion's pub­lic ad­dress sys­tem to chas­tise teach­ers over their lev­el of ab­sen­teeism and late­ness.

On Wednes­day, the Sun­day Guardian con­tact­ed the min­is­ter to dis­cuss the min­istry's re­port and to have some ques­tions an­swered on the is­sue. He said, "That is not an is­sue for the min­is­ter to deal with, you can speak to my com­mu­ni­ca­tions per­son."A call was made to the com­mu­ni­ca­tions spe­cial­ist Ali­cia Bus­by, who re­quest­ed that the ques­tions be e-mailed for con­sid­er­a­tion.

The Guardian's re­quest was as fol­lows:

The Teach­ing Ser­vice Com­mis­sion's pol­i­cy guide­lines for han­dling dis­ci­pline in school sets out a process for treat­ing with ab­sen­tee teach­ers; it ap­pears that the min­istry has not been fol­low­ing through.

1. Why has the per­ma­nent sec­re­tary/min­istry not been rec­om­mend­ing names of teach­ers to the TSC to be charged with the mis­con­duct of ab­sen­teeism?

2. Why has the per­ma­nent sec­re­tary/min­istry not yet sub­mit­ted to the TSC its 2011 re­port on teacher ab­sen­teeism?

3. Why was the 2012 re­port sub­mit­ted to the TSC mi­nus the names of teach­ers to be charged with mis­con­duct?

4. In light of these facts, how se­ri­ous re­al­ly is the min­istry about deal­ing with teacher ab­sen­teeism?

The ques­tions were sent to Bus­by who promised that a re­sponse would be forth­com­ing by the "close of the busi­ness day" on Fri­day. Up to late yes­ter­day there was no re­sponse from the min­istry.