Editorial | CARICOM fix to teacher crisis

Jamaica may be affected more than others by the exodus of teachers from classrooms for better-paying jobs elsewhere, including abroad. The problem, however, isn’t uniquely Jamaican.

It’s across the Caribbean and poses serious threats to the region’s development. Which is why the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), the regional economic integration organisation, must seek creative solutions, including the sharing of teachers via digital classrooms.

The high turnover in the teaching profession, driven by a quest for more pay and better working conditions, isn’t new to Jamaica. In recent decades the problem has been exacerbated by foreign recruiters (mainly from the United States, Britain and Canada) who, seeking to cover teacher shortages in those countries, dangle hefty compensation packages, the allure of teaching overseas, and easier paths to immigration for the families of the people they recruit.

It was assumed that recent significant pay rises to teachers, as part of a broader reclassification of public sector jobs, might slow the outflow. And that seemed to be the case up until a fortnight ago when the education minister, Fayval Williams, reported that this year up to September, based on existing data, 427 teachers had resigned from the public school system, or 1.6 per cent of the classroom employees.

At that level, the departures represented a 72 per cent decline on the 1, 538 resignations for the comparable period last year, when 6.2 per cent of state-paid teachers quit. Celebration was, however, premature.

Last week, Ms Williams disclosed that the resignations have doubled to 854. Four hundred (400) happened in 11 days.

IMMEDIATE EFFECT

While the regulations require that teachers give three months’ notice to quit, most of these resignations were with immediate effect. Schools will therefore have additional teaching gaps when the new academic year begins this week.

Some principals claim that many teachers didn’t resign earlier to see what their new packages would be. Some continued up to the end of August to be sure of being paid for that month before leaving for their new jobs, mostly abroad. Officials expect another wave of resignations at the end of September, after a round of late recruitment to fill jobs that remain open in the United States.

Ms Williams had announced a raft of measures – including allowing schools to hire retirees, giving the greenlight for teachers on long leave to be hired as their own substitutes or to teach elsewhere, and fast-tracking newly trained teachers into jobs – to help close gaps from the earlier resignations, which have now widened.

The crisis may not be as deep elsewhere in CARICOM as in Jamaica, which is still attempting to right-side its economy after decades of high debt and of puny growth constrained living standards. Nonetheless, other countries, to varying degrees, also contend with the problem, including the foreign poaching of teachers.

In Barbados, Mia Mottley’s government has been attempting to have a formal arrangement with the Fairfax county school district in the US state of Virginia, which would allow for an orderly recruitment of teachers, thereby avoiding the chaotic disruptions that bedevil Jamaica.

Elsewhere, the denominational boards of education in Trinidad and Tobago, a coalition of schools owned by religious organisations, earlier this year complained that thousands of students might have to be turned away from their institutions because of a shortage of teachers. Their problem is on two fronts: teachers have left the classroom while the island’s teachers services commission was being slow in confirming new hires.

In Guyana, where the discovery of oil is propelling galloping growth rates, President Irfaan Ali has been promising to fix a teacher shortage. Over several decades, during economic decline and political strife, Guyana lost large swathes of its professionals, including teachers, to immigration. With respect to teachers, foreign recruitment has, in recent times, worsened the situation.

OUTWARD MIGRATION

More generally, the Caribbean not only has high levels of outward migration, but it is the most educated who are likely to leave. One 2006 study found that in the 35 years between 1965 and 2000, 85 per cent of Jamaicans who were educated to the tertiary level had emigrated to Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries, the same ratio as Grenada. For Guyana, the figure was 89 per cent.

Those numbers imply the loss of CARICOM’s potentially most productive people, in a region where educational outcomes are already low and the community’s aim is to transform itself into a full-fledged single market and economy to drive its development. CARICOM, in the circumstance, needs a coordinated strategy to entice its brightest people and educated people, including teachers, to stay in the region. Ultimately, the solution is strong regional economies where citizens also feel safe.

This project requires, among other things, the services of good teachers. Given the shortage of teaching talent in individual countries, the community must rationally utilise those who are available. The pandemic, with its liberation of communication technologies that enhanced virtual travel, opened new possibilities.

There is no reason, for instance, why a specialist maths teacher in Kingstown, St Vincent, covering essentially the same syllabus, can’t, with the support of an in-class assistant, teach students at a school in Kingston, Jamaica. And vice versa.

CARICOM can make this happen. Or perhaps education entrepreneurs can.