The po­lit­i­cal life of Jack Warn­er will of­fi­cial­ly come to an end at 5 pm to­day when a new po­lit­i­cal leader is elect­ed for the In­de­pen­dent Lib­er­al Par­ty (ILP).

But a life in pol­i­tics is one Warn­er open­ly said he much re­gret­ted.

Warn­er was field­ing ques­tions from mem­bers of the me­dia fol­low­ing the Na­tion­al Con­ven­tion of Teach­ers, held at the Cas­ca­dia Ho­tel and Con­fer­ence Cen­tre, St. Ann's, yes­ter­day.

"I don't have to be in pol­i­tics to help peo­ple but I thought that was the way to go. But now in ret­ro­spect it was the wrong thing to do. I re­gret­ted it for sure.

"I would have been far bet­ter off and more com­fort­able and been of more val­ue to the peo­ple of this coun­try be­fore I be­came a Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment than now," Warn­er added.

His plans as a pri­vate cit­i­zen would in­clude writ­ing a book called In the Bel­ly of the Beast, a re­flec­tion on his po­lit­i­cal life; fo­cus­ing on his busi­ness­es; and en­joy­ing a va­ca­tion.

"At the end of the day you know what is con­sol­ing? The very peo­ple who have tried to dig a hole for me have now dug a big­ger hole for them­selves," Warn­er said.

On his ban from Fi­fa, Warn­er said it did not both­er him as he had not seen a foot­ball match for four and a half years, ei­ther in­ter­na­tion­al­ly or lo­cal­ly.

He said af­ter spend­ing some $20 mil­lion on his own foot­ball club, Joe Pub­lic, he dis­band­ed it some three years ago.

Asked if he be­lieved Fi­fa was on its last legs, Warn­er said he be­lieved the body was still fi­nan­cial­ly strong.

"And some peo­ple would want that be­cause I guess the Amer­i­cans would want to take it over," he added.

On his de­ci­sion to give up the par­ty's lead­er­ship po­si­tion, Warn­er said he be­lieved this was in keep­ing with the West­min­ster sys­tem, adding that he felt the par­ty was in good hands with who­ev­er was se­lect­ed.

On whom he would like to suc­ceed as po­lit­i­cal leader Warn­er opt­ed not to dis­close.

Warn­er, who is a for­mer teacher, de­liv­ered the fea­ture ad­dress at the con­ven­tion. He said it was il­log­i­cal that gy­nae­col­o­gist Dr Tim Gopeesingh had been pre­vi­ous­ly cho­sen as ed­u­ca­tion min­is­ter.

He said he begged for­mer prime min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar to in­stead put Clifton de Coteau since he came from the teach­ing pro­fes­sion but this sug­ges­tion was re­peat­ed­ly re­ject­ed.

Warn­er said the first and pri­ma­ry pre­req­ui­site for the build­ing of a sus­tain­able so­ci­ety was re­turn­ing the pow­er stolen from teach­ers and giv­ing them back the con­trol over their pro­fes­sion.

He said this in­clud­ed teach­ers be­ing in­volved in mak­ing de­ci­sions on ac­tiv­i­ties that di­rect­ly af­fect­ed their work, in­clud­ing de­ter­min­ing a school bud­get.

Warn­er added that a teacher could not be em­pow­ered if he or she was ill equipped with the skills and the abil­i­ty to help stu­dents to learn.

"If we want high-lev­el, deep learn­ing for stu­dents we have to have high­ly skilled and in­tel­lec­tu­al­ly able teach­ers. That means at­tract­ing, de­vel­op­ing and re­tain­ing teach­ers who have those qual­i­ties, and giv­ing them work­ing con­di­tions that in­spire them and of­fer them a chance to soar.

"And if we can­not find them our job is to cre­ate the en­vi­ron­ment where we can grow such teach­ers so that change can be made not on­ly in our schools but al­so in our so­ci­ety," Warn­er said.

In mak­ing some rec­om­men­da­tions to im­prove the pro­fes­sion, Warn­er said the fol­low­ing:

�2Every term a prin­ci­pal hol­i­day should be giv­en to teach­ers who should be man­dat­ed to at­tend teacher de­vel­op­ment sem­i­nars with­in their ed­u­ca­tion­al dis­tricts

�2 Teach­ers should be chal­lenged to come up with cul­tur­al­ly spe­cif­ic method­olo­gies as a tool for learn­ing in the class­room

�2 In­cen­tives should be giv­en to schools that achieve one hun­dred per cent pass­es at ex­ter­nal ex­ams

�2 Af­ter five years, teach­ers should be giv­en a paid sab­bat­i­cal to up­grade their skills

�2 Teach­ers should be giv­en lap­tops, free In­ter­net, soft­ware and ac­cess to data­bas­es to as­sist them in the prepa­ra­tion of their lessons. They should al­so have free sub­scrip­tion for on­line mag­a­zines re­lat­ing to mod­ern tech­niques of teach­ing

�2 Each class should have two teach­ers; the roles should be for con­tent and for dis­ci­pline; this fa­cil­i­tates an en­vi­ron­ment of learn­ing in the class­room

�2 The school should em­ploy mon­i­tors who are re­spon­si­ble for dis­ci­pline on the school com­pound with the ex­cep­tion of the class­room where a teacher is in con­trol. (GK)