I write in response to your editorial of Friday, March 26, 2004 seeking clarity on several matters touched on in my speech to the Petersfield High School family.

The teachers of Jamaica have often shared with the Ministry of Education their concerns, opinions and commendations relating to education and national issues in behind-the-scenes meetings, open forums, press releases and lobbying of critical players. Teachers go public when flawed decisions, with potential to harm education, are taken.

The teachers of Jamaica have sought to contribute in a positive way to the revision of the Education Regulations.

The Education Act

The Education Regulations 2002 are now at final draft and have not addressed teachers’ concerns on several matters.

The Redefinition of New Entrant

A New Entrant is at present a person entering the teaching force for the first time. If that teacher leaves the education system, even for part of a month, that teacher has broken service and loses earned study or vacation leave. Quite unfair, unreasonable and unconscionable. However, when that teacher resumes he/she is not treated as a new entrant and hence not humiliated, demoralised and demotivated as is proposed via redefinition.

Present conditions

of service of a New Entrant

New Entrant must:

1 Provide evidence of medical fitness;

2 Provide two recent character statements;

3 Provide proof of age by way of a birth certificate;

4 Provide NIS and TRN numbers;

5 Accept employment on a provisional basis, (successful completion of which will decide the nature of future appointment in that or any other educational institution) (Article 66 (2) e).

6 Accept remuneration at the first point of the relevant salary scale.

Teachers who resign, remain in Jamaica, or emigrate and return to Jamaica have never, as a matter of course, been reintegrated into the system at the same levels and with the same benefits as if they had not broken service.

Teachers who initially joined the service at the same time as one who broke service, continued to move up the salary scale, enjoying all benefits, over the years.

Teachers who break service return to the point in the salary scale at which they were on leaving. If a teacher left at the first point of a scale and stayed out for 10 years, that teacher returns to the first point of the scale even while counterparts are at the 11th point of the scale. As now obtains, the teachers’ training and local experience are taken into account on returning to service even after migration.

In the case of a new entrant status as proposed, teaching experience gained locally or abroad will only fit the teacher for the first point of the scale. A new entrant begins at the base of a salary scale. This is where new recruits with no experience and underdeveloped skills are placed. Teaching experience gained wherever will not be taken into consideration. This is the punishment for going overseas to teach. It is this injustice that led me to ascribe malice.

The length of the school year

As now obtains, the school year is 190 days. Government’s proposal is to extend the summer term by 5 days. Classes in most schools are large and in cramped spaces. Summer days are hot and humid. These conditions affect students’ attention and concentration spans, which are psychological determinants of levels of assimilation. These determinants were already affected by students’ disruptive behaviour, nutritional levels, parental neglect and abuse. Many classrooms leak, grounds are flooded, teaching environment is dark, all due to the higher than normal levels of precipitation consistent with daytime heating during the summer months.

With findings that class-size is not significantly related to student performance, class-size reduction is no priority.

With diminishing returns as discussed, students are unlikely to benefit from the additional five days of pedagogic exposure.

Yes, some schools undertake several weeks of extra lessons during summer, so why not institutionalise summer sessions? Government has the grade 4 literacy camp as they, too, believe that teachers are underutilised or are enriching themselves at parents’ expense. The facts are that a small percentage of any school population is engaged in summer lessons, allowing for much more physical space per child.

Summer school days are shorter and often end before the afternoon rains. The students dress far more casually, often in vest and shorts, engaging in much more leisure activity as teachers reinforce taught concepts to tide students over the period of inactivity. Not only are the students unlikely to benefit from the additional pedagogic effort, but they are more likely to become aggressive, disruptive, intolerant and frustrated.

Many private preparatory schools have fewer than 190 days of regular school, yet seem to get better results than public schools of similar type (several psychological determinants?). Zealous, ill-advised, counter-productive haste!

Of course, that this proposal will ask teachers to put in more teaching time will raise eyebrows because of the level of mistrust prevailing on the matter of extended school year between the teachers and the Government.

Daily classroom pedagogic contact is a small fraction of teachers’ local, community and national involvement. The many good ones among us do not measure time, but lament how we are perceived, led by those charged with implementing Government policy.

Lesson preparation is time-consuming. A lesson takes about an hour to prepare. Consultation time takes up much of lunchtime, break and after school. Correcting each script is a painstaking exercise. Homework-vetting targets individual capacities. Teachers’ real time input should not be measured in class contact.

CXC and SSC examinations fall between May and June (end of syllabus). Internal examinations are set to coincide with CXC and SSC. What do these students return to school for, especially since many are out for the entire examination period?

Teachers spend an average of 10 days after the closure of school in July to complete reports, accept GSAT placements, do preliminary registration; launch student welfare programmes, sensitise and counsel parents for cost sharing.

The Cost

The regular school year is approximately 40 weeks. One extra week represents 2.5% of the operational costs. With present difficulties, will Government provide that extra financial support? Parents will face extra expenses for bus fare and lunch and must prepare students for school.

National attendance averages will fall against world standards due to poor turnout for the extra days. We will not gain from pulling down our national attendance averages. Culturally Jamaican families get into holiday mode in late June, after Common Entrance results. This, therefore, is a diminution of students’ leisure time, hence my alluding to higher levels of disruption from and signs of frustration in students.

Every time teachers seek salary increases they are reminded of the long holidays they have, subtly suggesting that they should go and “look work” to augment their shortfall. Each year Government plans workshops to use most of the holidays, including Easter break, which is merely a week long. The Education Regulations 2002 (Draft), Article 83 section (I) says “Teachers in public educational institutions shall not normally be eligible for vacation leave with pay in addition to school holidays”. This must be interpreted as vacation leave. Any such extension of the school year will be held suspect when there is no established value-added component.

Government intimates that holidays are available to teachers to use as vacation, yet seek to pass laws that say:

Article 93 – Position of teachers during school Vacation

Sections 1-3 subsections (i) and (ii)

1 A teacher on school holidays is on duty, and may be required to perform services connected with his or her substantive duties or to attend training courses, seminars or workshops approved by the ministry.

2 A teacher who fails to respond to a call to attend workshops or training courses, etc without reasonable explanation may be cited for professional misconduct.

3 A teacher leaving his/her official address during school holidays shall notify the board of his or her temporary location. (Particularly offensive).

If persons talk out of both sides of their mouths it breeds mistrust!

Neither teachers nor Government can expect to eat their cake and have it. School holidays would clearly not be vacation and should not be factored into consideration for vacation leave or remuneration.

So yes, the proposal to extend the school year raises concerns as there are injustices prevailing in the education system that are terribly demotivating and that the average Jamaican parent is not aware of. When the teachers of Jamaica attempt to share certain realities with the public and, by extension, the parents who could be tempted to be logged on to fallacies, they are termed confrontational and reactive and chided for not being proactive. The agenda for increasing school days may not be essentially an attempt to add value but to punish.

The Shift System

This has not really worked in Jamaica. That it provides a place for many more students is, to my mind, the only positive. The concept has been extensively studied locally, and several of the researchers recommended that it be discontinued.

Here are the facts.

The Shift System:

a Openly supports the view that Government sustains elite schools, as not a single traditional high school is on shift;

b Frustrates efforts at equity, as key facilities of laboratories and libraries are not available for after-school practice as is the case in straight day schools;

c Allows that instructional materials used in class cannot be displayed and left in place, as the other shift needs the display areas for their instructional materials.

d Does not support extra-curricular activities, as it is a shortage of space that led to the introduction of the shift system in the first place.

e Creates additional opportunities for students’ maladaptive behaviour with extended unsupervised time. Those on the afternoon shift sleep in class, as they show up at school tired, sweaty and miserable.

f Exposes students and teachers of the afternoon shift to possible physical harm under the cover of darkness.

What was a project has now become a programme. The shift system attempts to treat the symptom, though not without knowledge of the cause of the disease.

Computer Training for Teachers

On the matter of “training teachers in computer literacy and to deliver computer-aided instruction”, several practitioners tell their story in our local newspapers periodically. To write fully on that matter just now could do more harm than good.

The teachers of Jamaica, I know, support the initiative of a ‘Task Force on Education’. The approach to problems in education has been “helter-skelter” to say the least. There have been too many projects with attendant acronyms, each trying to outdo the other while education limps along. Response to problems in education must be in a timely, studied way, pulling heavily on local expertise.

More than a decade ago, Professor Errol Miller, himself a past president of the Jamaica Teachers’ Association, was commissioned to come up with MINIMUM STANDARDS for the education system (Towards Standards 1993). The Ministry of Education accepted the voluminous report. Where are we now as regards satisfying those recommendations? The Task Force, and especially student(s) on the Task Force, may want to look at that report which recommends 10 days per school year for teachers’ professional development.

A good way to get five extra days?