Daniel ThwaitesIT MAKES no sense whatsoever. There are schools in Jamaica that are understaffed, even while others are overstaffed. Enough teachers are employed, but the deployment of teachers is skewed, not according to the needs of the students, but according to haphazard growth. Every study, by foreigner and local alike, points to the need to change this situation, as a healthy student-to-teacher ratio is one of the key factors for educational success. It sounds relatively simple to remedy; just reassign teachers to where they are needed. If only the public sector recognised any such rationale. But the very nature of a bureaucracy is that it flies in the face of reason.
The Ministry of Education ought to have addressed the problem long ago. Belatedly, it appears ready to do so now. However, the JTA is resisting. The newspapers report that the JTA's president-elect, Paul Adams, is warning against the reformation. "I am saying Mr. Minister, don't go that route. That's a collision course and when the dust has settled, I don't want the country to lose!"
So now it is permissible to threaten the Minister, rather like the teachers complain that some of their students threaten them, and so on, and so on. It's enough to make one begin to think about finding foreign help with our teachers as well as with our policemen. Because when the dust has settled, what we need are far more passes than the abysmal showing the children are now making. And when the dust has settled, one must ask if it is wise for teachers to pose their interests as antithetical to the interests of the students?
It reflects a general problem with the civil service that has rules geared toward process -- interminable process -- not results. There is so much about the education system that so obviously needs reform, yet attempts at reformation are consistently met by howls from those with vested interests in the status quo. The whole system of leave needs urgent reform. The business of performance-based assessment should be the objective of any forward-thinking teachers' union. Instead there is resistance.
As it stands, the Jamaica Teachers Association, unless it undertakes to fundamentally rethink its role in the education system, will continue to evolve into a mere defender of the indefensible. That's when the dust has settled.
The system needs to be shaken at the very roots. For one thing, the Government is the employer of teachers, and that is a problem. It is the schools that should employ teachers, and the schools should have the right to hire and, if necessary fire, according to their needs. The bureaucracy at the Ministry of Education and the stridency of the JTA exist in an unholy symbiotic relationship, each feeding off the other. As such, an increased measure of power and responsibility needs to be devolved (inasmuch as is possible) away from Heroes' Circle and out to the communities wherein children are educated or not.
The militancy of the JTA ought to concern everyone interested in moving the country ahead. Though it is an important matter, the education system is not primarily about the employment of the teachers. The grand objective is the education of children and young people. That is why, as a country, we spend so much of our meagre budget on it. And it is also why everyone ought to insist that the rules propounded by the Ministry of Education serve the best interest of students, not that of a special interest group. When the dust has settled, Jamaica will either have undertaken the often painful reforms, or it will retain a third-rate system that blights the opportunities of the young.
Daniel Thwaites is involved in teaching and writing.
