Teach­ers from all lev­els of the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem are be­ing ad­vised to have a lie-in or late sleep Thurs­day morn­ing as they rest and re­flect on what their union deems as dis­re­spect be­ing dis­played by the Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer (CPO) to their union’s re­quest to meet to con­tin­ue wage ne­go­ti­a­tions.

Fol­low­ing this, how­ev­er, they are ex­pect­ed to re­port for the evening ses­sion at their re­spec­tive schools.

This was con­firmed by first vice of the T&T Uni­fied Teach­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (TTUTA), Mar­lon Seales who said while teach­ers can­not em­bark on in­dus­tri­al ac­tion, they are en­ti­tled to pro­vi­sion­al leave.

Sep­tem­ber 22 will the sec­ond such day of en­gage­ment by teach­ers, who obeyed the call to ac­tion on Sep­tem­ber 5, which was the first day of the new aca­d­e­m­ic year 2022/2023.

Un­able to say just how the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion (MOE) will ad­dress the ab­sence of teach­ing per­son­nel from Ear­ly Child­hood Care and Ed­u­ca­tion (EC­CE) through to the pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary school lev­els at least un­til noon on Thurs­day – Seales ex­plained, “On a typ­i­cal day, teach­ers usu­al­ly sign the reg­is­ter twice. Once in the morn­ing, and once in the evening when they are leav­ing for the day.”

Like all pub­lic ser­vants, teach­ers are en­ti­tled to sick leave, or pro­vi­sion­al leave in or­der to at­tend to ur­gent per­son­al busi­ness.