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Friday, July 11, 2025

BATCE teachers want to meet MoE on future of the schools

by

KAY-MARIE FLETCHER
371 days ago
20240705
Bishop Anstey High School and Trinity College East.

Bishop Anstey High School and Trinity College East.

As the bell rings to sig­nal the end of an­oth­er aca­d­e­m­ic term, teach­ers at the Bish­op Anstey East, Trin­i­ty Col­lege East and BATCE sixth form are still un­sure if they will have a job come next term.

This is be­cause they’ve re­ceived no con­fir­ma­tion on whether or not the schools’ tran­si­tion to a gov­ern­ment-as­sist­ed mod­el has been fi­nalised.

Teach­ers, who spoke with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, now want to meet face-to-face with Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion of­fi­cials.

In May, the MoE ad­vised the schools that the “com­plex ne­go­ti­a­tions” were at an ad­vanced stage with fi­nal rec­om­men­da­tions to be pre­sent­ed to the Cab­i­net in 30 to 60 days.

That time has now passed and teach­ers say there’s been no word on the next steps.

Af­ter a 20-year con­tract be­tween the Bish­op Anstey As­so­ci­a­tion (BAA) and the State end­ed in 2021, Gov­ern­ment now has com­plete own­er­ship of the schools’ build­ings and land in Trinci­ty.

Teach­ers said it’s been years of try­ing to get an­swers from BAA, and now they sim­ply no longer trust them.

The as­so­ci­a­tion com­pris­es Bish­op of the An­gli­can Dio­cese Rt Rev’d Bish­op Claude Berkley, Dr Murchi­son Brown, Al­i­son Bais­den, Deb­bie Melville, Alana Taitt-Clarke and Althea Har­vey-Mar­tin.

As such, BATCE teach­ers are now re­quest­ing a meet­ing with the min­istry to dis­cuss the way for­ward.

While some teach­ers were hes­i­tant to by­pass BAA to get to the min­istry, oth­ers be­lieved they had no choice.

One teacher said, “We’re at the end of the term now and teach­ers are in a pre­car­i­ous po­si­tion be­cause we don’t know what could hap­pen over the sum­mer and if we are com­ing out to re­sume du­ties as nor­mal in Sep­tem­ber or if all of a sud­den we’re told, ‘No, this group of teach­ers would con­tin­ue, but this group won’t.’ We sim­ply don’t know.”

“We are nei­ther for the Gov­ern­ment’s takeover nor against the Gov­ern­ment’s takeover. We don’t have a prob­lem with the takeover once our jobs are se­cure.”

An­oth­er teacher said, “We do not trust the board be­cause they’ve not giv­en us any feed­back on any­thing. Per­haps, the teach­ers need to hear from the min­istry di­rect­ly.... It’s Ju­ly/Au­gust va­ca­tion but we can­not en­joy any time off when there’s so much un­cer­tain­ty.”

BAA chair­man Bish­op Berkley said yes­ter­day he is aware of the teach­ers’ con­cerns and would like to pro­vide them with an­swers but the as­so­ci­a­tion is wait­ing on a meet­ing with MoE.

He said a meet­ing was sched­uled for June 25, how­ev­er, had to be post­poned.

He is now wait­ing for the min­istry to tell him when they can meet next.

Guardian Me­dia reached out to Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly for com­ment, but up to press time, re­ceived no re­sponse.


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