JTA head slams 'short-sighted' education ministry

The Jamaica Teachers' Association (JTA) has hammered the Government over several policy initiatives introduced by the education ministry, arguing that some will not have the impact that was intended and that others have started to raise the frustration level among public-sector teachers.

President of the association, Nadine Molloy Young, also slammed the recently announced cuts in the 2010-2011 capital budget for education as "short-sighted", and again criticised out the Alternative Secondary Transition Education Programme (ASTEP) and the ministry's safety and security policy.

Molloy Young, who was speaking at a recent meeting of the Kiwanis Club of North St Andrew, held at the Police Officers' Club in St Andrew, made it clear that both policies had the support of the JTA, but said there are important questions about how they will work.

major concerns

Two of the association's major concerns with ASTEP, she asserted, were the availability of classrooms to accommodate students and the need for extra intervention and counselling.

"Physically, where are you going to place the children? One principal told me students have been placed in his school and he has nowhere to place them," the JTA president said.

"You can't have those big classes, you can't put them 'round a corner by themselves because they are going to feel like you have singled them out to say that something is wrong with them," she added.

For the programme to have the desired impact, Molloy Young argued that there has to be an attempt to deal with the students on an individual basis.

"It's not enough to say they are bad and they ought to behave themselves and they ought to have better parenting and the teachers need to know more. The interventions must be done," she declared.

Pointing to security as one of the biggest concerns for teachers, Molloy Young charged that the education ministry is unable to fund the safety and security policy that has been implemented in schools.

"We know that we are going to have problems holding people accountable to this policy because they (Ministry of Education) can't implement it in the manner in which it should be implemented," she said.

She argued that student attacks on teachers, though under-reported, are widespread, causing serious psychological trauma for teachers. These attacks, she pointed out, usually occur where there are large classes with children who are usually experiencing learning difficulties and other problems.

"The children are defensive, they are angry, and it takes very little to tip them over the edge, and so we end up with our teachers fearing for their own safety," said Molloy Young.

The JTA president also raised concerns about the state of some school buildings, saying most of them "are not really very safe.

"Some of them are very old, some of them were not even supposed to be schools. They were built as hotels and other things and were later converted," she explained.

The Jamaica Teaching Council (JTC), the agency established by the Government three years ago to monitor professional standards among teachers, also got caught in the JTA's cross hairs.

Based on the stated objectives of the JTC, Molloy Young said: "It sounds like they are creating a super parallel ministry where the minister will have all the power to run all the schools in Jamaica."