JENSEN LA VENDE

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Michael Dowlath on Tues­day met with the As­so­ci­a­tion of De­nom­i­na­tion­al Boards of Ed­u­ca­tion (ADBE), just days af­ter the as­so­ci­a­tion’s call for talks was high­light­ed in the me­dia.

ADBE chair­per­son Sharon Man­groo told Guardian Me­dia the meet­ing was “very pro­duc­tive.” She said the as­so­ci­a­tion had orig­i­nal­ly been sched­uled to meet with the min­istry’s Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary, but was pleas­ant­ly sur­prised that Dowlath at­tend­ed in­stead.

One of the main is­sues dis­cussed was the short­age of teach­ers at schools un­der the as­so­ci­a­tion’s purview. Man­groo said the ADBE agreed to part­ner with the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion to ad­dress staffing gaps.

“As part of the col­lab­o­ra­tion, we agreed to as­sist by pro­vid­ing da­ta, be­cause the min­istry needs hard da­ta. So it’s one thing for us to say we have staff short­ages; it’s an­oth­er for us to pro­vide the da­ta. We ac­tu­al­ly have 250 Teacher I va­can­cies in our schools at this point, and that is not the min­istry’s fault. That is the Teach­ing Ser­vice Com­mis­sion,” she said.

Man­groo added that there are 38 va­can­cies across the as­so­ci­a­tion’s 31 sec­ondary schools, with many teach­ers act­ing in se­nior roles with­out con­fir­ma­tion.

She said there is lit­tle the min­is­ter can do di­rect­ly re­gard­ing the Teach­ing Ser­vice Com­mis­sion’s ap­point­ment of teach­ers.

“We’ve asked for the min­is­ter’s help in deal­ing with this, be­cause I keep say­ing we’re not talk­ing about in­di­vid­ual peo­ple. We have a lot of in­di­vid­ual peo­ple who are work­ing very hard in a sys­tem that works against you. What we have to be do­ing is look­ing at chang­ing the sys­tem,” she said.

Man­groo added that the com­mis­sion’s sys­tem dates back to the ear­ly 1960s and has not evolved to keep pace with the ex­pan­sion of schools, teach­ers and stu­dent pop­u­la­tions.

“We’re still us­ing the same sys­tem, a high­ly cen­tralised sys­tem. It’s not work­ing. It’s not work­ing at all,” she said.

The as­so­ci­a­tion rep­re­sents 23 de­nom­i­na­tion­al boards and over­sees 43 of the coun­try’s 134 sec­ondary schools and 341 of its 477 pri­ma­ry schools. Its mem­ber­ship in­cludes the An­ju­man Sun­nat-ul-Ja­maat As­so­ci­a­tion (AS­JA), the Sanatan Dhar­ma Ma­ha Sab­ha (SDMS), the An­gli­can School Board and the Catholic Board.

The ADBE had called for the meet­ing to ad­dress sev­er­al is­sues, in­clud­ing the use of AI text­books and the pro­posed trans­fer of school main­te­nance re­spon­si­bil­i­ties from the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion to the Min­istry of Pub­lic Util­i­ties.

Man­groo said the mat­ters were not ful­ly dis­cussed, but the main­te­nance is­sue will be ad­dressed in fol­low-up sub­com­mit­tee meet­ings, as Dowlath has com­mit­ted to quar­ter­ly meet­ings with the as­so­ci­a­tion go­ing for­ward.

On the is­sue of AI text­books, she said their use is not manda­to­ry, but rather an op­tion­al tool for schools and teach­ers who choose to utilise them.

Man­groo al­so con­firmed that the on­go­ing con­tro­ver­sy in­volv­ing the prin­ci­pal of Holy Name Con­vent and a pe­ti­tion call­ing for her re­moval was not raised dur­ing the meet­ing. Al­though the school is Catholic-based, she not­ed that it does not fall un­der the Catholic Board, but in­stead un­der its own de­nom­i­na­tion­al board, the Do­mini­can Sis­ters of St Cather­ine of Siena.