Wheel and come again with teaching bill

Bruce Golding, Guest Columnist

The following are excerpts of a recent presentation by former Prime Minister Bruce Golding on the draft Jamaica Teaching Council Bill.

In commenting on the draft bill, it is important to separate the principles that inform the bill and the actual provisions contained therein.

No reasonable objection can be raised to the principle of professional registration of teachers. It is a standard requirement that exists in the United States, Canada and most of Europe. All other major professional groups in Jamaica, such as doctors, lawyers, architects, are required by statute to be registered and are forbidden to practise without such registration.

On the one hand, it is required for the protection of the public, but it also confers the benefit of professional/legal status to the practitioner. It also facilitates reciprocal arrangements with other countries for mutual recognition of qualifications and competence.

In examining the draft bill, the first thing that jumped out at me was the length - some 120 sections. This compares with the statutes relating to the registration of lawyers (40), architects and engineers (24), and doctors (16). It is an issue of both form and substance. Some of the provisions are onerous and cumbersome and the paperwork entailed is not worth the value they offer. A better format would be to simplify the main body of the bill and transfer some of the provisions to appropriate regulations.

What the bill seeks to determine and validate is that teachers:

• have the required qualifications;
• are competent, and that competence is not only sustained but enhanced through continued professional development;
• possess the character and maintain conduct that render them 'fit and proper'.

These objectives cannot be faulted. The question is how are they to be achieved and how effective can the council be in achieving them.

The issue of qualifications is straightforward, based as it is on certification by accredited institutions and training programmes. Provision is made for the council to administer tests where gaps or discrepancies in qualifications arise.

Inconsistent standards

The need for individual teacher-performance assessment has long been recognised. The Ministry of Education developed and published in October 2004 the Teacher Performance Appraisal Policy and Procedure Handbook. This is a school-based assessment programme requiring each teacher to be subject to classroom observation and inspection of records at least once per term and annual reviews, all conducted by senior staff members at the same school. This system of evaluation has its place, especially as a tool for effective school management. It is, however, deficient in important respects:

• It is virtually impossible to maintain consistency of standards across hundreds of different schools;
• Teacher evaluation requires special skills that even experienced teachers do not necessarily possess;
• There is the danger that objectivity may be compromised because of the relationship (favourable or unfavourable) that exists between the assessor and the assessee;
• Appeals against assessment are heard by a tribunal led by the school board chairman, who may not have the competence to properly adjudicate.

It is my view that, without displacing the existing school-based assessment procedure, there is need for a system of independent, external assessment (much like the role of external auditors) conducted by persons specially trained who can act dispassionately. This is now widely practised in the US, Canada and Europe. This ought to be part of the function of the National Education Inspectorate and the results would be made available to the council.

An important issue is how performance assessment results would factor into the registration and licensing process. Great care would have to be taken as to how performance is scored and appropriate provisions would have to be made for review, appeals and adjudication. A minimum score would need to be set, below which renewal of licence would require special consideration, including provisional/probationary licensing and, possibly, refusal. Opportunities for remediation would also have to be provided.

I suggest, further, that the remuneration of teachers be incentivised based on this performance assessment instead of the automaticity of increments.

There are other important considerations. The evaluation of teachers cannot be disconnected from student performance but this has to be approached cautiously. There is a tendency to grade schools and cast judgement on teachers based on certified benchmarks such as GSAT, CXC and CAPE results. These are important criteria in measuring student competence but they have less correlation with teacher competence.

Factors of learning

There is a wide range of factors that determine student outcomes, of which teacher performance is only one. A potter is only as good as the clay he is given to work with. The achievement level of students entering Campion College, for example, is far different from those entering Denham Town or Trench Town high schools. It cannot be fair to the teachers there to expect comparable outcomes, especially with our conveyor-belt system that advances students from one grade to the next irrespective of whether they have attained the mastery to so advance.

The test of a teacher's competence and performance must be what they did with the clay they got with all its flaws, inadequacies and imperfections, not the absolute quality of the finished product. It is not beyond methodology to measure progress in addition to measuring certified outcomes.

There are a number of other provisions in the draft bill that need to be reviewed and, in some cases, removed.

For example:

• The composition of the council ought to be reviewed. The complaint by the Jamaica Teachers' Association (JTA) that teachers are inadequately represented has merit. It has been argued that the regulation of teachers should be left primarily in the hands of teaching professionals, as is the case with other professional groups. I don't share this view, because no other professional group has as great an impact on the nation's prospects and involves such a wide range of stakeholders who must also be represented. There is no compelling need for the financial secretary or solicitor general to be included, and the multiple representation of other groups such as the churches and independent schools could be reduced to allow the membership of the JTA to be increased from six to 11 without increasing the total membership beyond the stated 25 members.

• While it is important to ensure that persons registered as teachers are not sexual miscreants, the provisions in the bill are an overkill. The mandatory requirement to submit a criminal record upon application is onerous. It does not provide the fix that the bill is seeking because the majority of sexual miscreants more than likely have no criminal record.

• The mandatory suspension of licence if a teacher is charged with a specified offence runs counter to the principle of natural justice and leaves no room for consideration of the particular circumstances (e.g., wives can now file charges against husbands for rape). Charges can be maliciously laid and some room must be left for the council to consider the particular circumstances.

• The provisions relating to disciplinary procedures create considerable ambiguity regarding the council vis-à-vis the school board. The respective role of each needs to be clearly defined. It may be appropriate to specify the type of infraction and the level of disciplinary action that would be dealt with by the school board and those that would be dealt with by the council.

• There are some provisions prohibiting the right of appeal against revocation, the right to be represented at informal disciplinary hearings, the recovery of damages, and vesting the minister with the power to impose fines that, I believe, are of dubious constitutional validity. These need to be revisited.

• The bill is too vague on the type of conditions that the council can impose on the various licences and authorisations it issues. Greater specificity is needed.

The bill is not to be ripped to pieces or discarded, as some have suggested. Its broad objective is important and critically necessary if we are to advance the transformation of our education system so crucial to our development goals.

Bruce Golding is a former prime minister. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com.