An­na-Lisa Paul

New­ly-in­stalled pres­i­dent of the T&T Uni­fied Teach­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (TTUTA) Lyns­ley Doo­d­hai says his ex­ec­u­tive's first or­der of busi­ness would be to ad­dress the con­tin­u­ing ex­pan­sion of the Pri­ma­ry Cur­ricu­lum Rewrite (PCR).

He said the PCR was akin to the Con­tin­u­ous As­sess­ment Com­po­nent (CAC) which was in­tro­duced in 2012 un­der the stew­ard­ship of for­mer Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Tim Gopeesingh and scrapped in Feb­ru­ary last year by cur­rent Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter An­tho­ny Gar­cia.

Doo­d­hai said it was just an­oth­er form of "pres­sure" on the shoul­ders of pri­ma­ry school pupils. He was speak­ing af­ter an in­stal­la­tion cer­e­mo­ny at the union's Curepe head of­fice yes­ter­day.

He said the new ex­ec­u­tive was ea­ger to re­sume the month­ly meet­ings with the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion dur­ing which it in­tend­ed to raise the PCR mat­ter. The first meet­ing is card­ed for to­mor­row.

In re­sponse, Gar­cia said: "We will be will­ing to dis­cuss the mat­ter when we meet. We share a close re­la­tion­ship with all stake­hold­ers and TTUTA is one such body."

Im­me­di­ate past pres­i­dent Da­vanand Sinanan urged the in­com­ing ex­ec­u­tive to come to­geth­er and work to pro­mote and pre­serve teach­ers' rights.

He ac­knowl­edged the mud-sling­ing dur­ing the re­cent­ly con­clud­ed elec­tion cam­paign but said the time had come for all to "get on with the job."

NEW ex­ec­u­tive

The new ex­ec­u­tive, led by Doo­d­hai, in­cludes first vice-pres­i­dent Mar­lon Seales; sec­ond vice- pres­i­dent Kryr­la Robert­son; third vice-pres­i­dent Dar­ren Lee Him; re­turn­ing gen­er­al sec­re­tary Fitzroy Daniel and re­turn­ing trea­sur­er Gewan Dur­ga.

Daniel's po­si­tion was un­op­posed while Dur­ga re­tained his post.

Seales is the cousin of Michael Seales, pres­i­dent of the Po­lice Ser­vice So­cial and Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion.