EDITORIAL - Get on board, JTA

If it were commerce and their product was as consistently bad as the education outcomes delivered by Jamaica's teachers, the enterprise would be either out of business, or in receivership and the bulk of its employees out of work.

Or, the management would be aggressively re-engineering the operation, which is what we understand that education's new boss, Ronald Thwaites, is planning to do. Nearly a year and a half into the job, Mr Thwaites is, in our view, getting going a bit late. But better late than never.

Should Mr Thwaites, despite being almost obsequiously courteous to teachers, expect ready support for reforming a calcified education system, he must perish the thought.

Already, and expectedly, the special interests, in particular the Jamaica Teachers' Association (JTA), are flexing their muscles. If it is allowed to have its way, the teachers' union will undermine the needed overhaul of the system, merely to the financial advantage of its members.

The reform agenda outlined by Mr Thwaites in Parliament last week is on two fronts.

One is economic, and is an important element in the Government's strategy for repairing the country's fiscal crisis. It calls for using more efficiently the J$75 billion, or 14 per cent of the Budget, allocated to the education sector. When debt servicing is removed, education gets a quarter of the Budget.

Around 73 per cent of the education spend goes to remunerating teachers, who often complain that they are underpaid, which, on the face of it, may be true. But the raw numbers, as laid bare by Mr Thwaites last week, mask a hidden, sometimes wasteful and largely unaffordable flow to teachers. In some respects, it is reflective of the unproductive excesses of the public sector - only worse.

Long paid leaves

For instance, teachers who have been in their jobs for the past decade are entitled to up to 62 days of fully paid leave; in the case of those employed since 2003, it is 52 days.

In the latter - and better - case, the holiday entitlement represents 27 per cent of the school year, for which substitute teachers have to be hired.

Further, after two years on the job, teachers are eligible for a year's study leave with pay, whether or not the courses relate directly to their jobs or are in keeping with the strategic direction of the education ministry. Vacation and study leave, according to Mr Thwaites, cost $2.5 billion a year.

Further, once employed to a school, it is difficult, and almost impossible, to transfer a teacher to another. It is tough, in the circumstance, to rationalise the system by moving teachers from areas of oversupply to ones of need.

Mr Thwaites, rightly, wants to change these automatic entitlements, promising in exchange to underwrite a portion of a teacher's study in fields related to areas of emphasis by his ministry.

The JTA's first response is expectedly negative. The union should reconsider.

It should instead sign on to a programme of minimum expected outcomes for teachers and principals and performance bonuses when these standards are exceeded, within prescribed bands.

Chest-thumping self-praise by the JTA doesn't resonate when nearly half the students entering the secondary system are not ready for that level of education, and barely half the students can pass English at CSEC after five years of study.

The opinions on this page, except for the above, do not necessarily reflect the views of The Gleaner. To respond to a Gleaner editorial, email us: editor@gleanerjm.com or fax: 922-6223. Responses should be no longer than 400 words. Not all responses will be published.