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Western Bureau:
Education Minister Fayval Williams said the move to recruit foreign teachers was based on recommendations from principals, but at least one principals’ association claimed to have no knowledge of the claim.
“I don’t know if the principals have made that request, but there is a good chance that the principals have said that to the minister in their one-on-one conversations with her,” said Jennifer Williams, president of the Jamaica Association of Principals and Vice-Principals (JAPVP).
When asked if the association had made such a request to the Ministry of Education, the JAPVP president replied: “No.”
According to the headmaster, who is also the principal of Queen’s School, the education minister has a very good relationship with the headteachers and the suggestion she mentioned might have been made in a casual conversation rather than in a formal setting.
However, she said hiring teachers from other countries to Jamaica was nothing new, noting that teachers from Cuba and Ghana, especially those with professional skills, had been coming to Jamaica to teach in local classrooms for some time.
“I think what’s worrisome is the treatment they offer. We hope they don’t have treatment that we don’t know about,” the JAPVP president said. “We hope they get the same salary and benefits as us when they come.”
Not planning to flood the industry
The JAPVP president also said she has not found any members who are currently opposed to the plan to recruit overseas teachers.
“We hope that no arrangements will be proposed to them that are not targeted at our teachers because the real issue is the salaries of teachers and the resources to teach students,” she said.
Addressing delegates at the 60th Annual Conference of the Jamaica Teachers Association (JTA) in Trelawny yesterday, the Education Minister said Government had no plans to import large numbers of foreign teachers into the education sector.
“So we are not going to flood the sector. At the moment, we do have foreign teachers in our system from other countries. We have Cuban teachers who teach more than just Spanish,” the minister said.
She further said she was well aware that the ministry needed to fill the vacancies from within.
“When we look at new teachers coming into the system, we see gaps in various subject areas. We went around and talked to principals about this option and they expressed interest in having it,” she said.
Williams went on to say that bringing in more foreign teachers is a precise measure to meet the urgent needs of the education sector.
“We’re not going to flood the industry as the Opposition is saying. That’s not what we’re doing. It’s more like a surgical approach to those gaps that I know need to be filled from within our own system, but that’s going to take some time,” she said.
The permanent secretary of the Ministry of Education, Dr. Kasan Troupe, confirmed that the planned meetings with the ambassadors of Ghana and the Philippines went well and that teachers from those countries were now required to upload their resumes to the Ministry of Education portal, which is accessible to school administrators.
“Recruitment and selection is done by the schools, so we will provide opportunities through these countries for our principals to see who else could be considered for employment. The final decision is theirs, not the Department of Education,” Troup said. “We have a job bank platform for local schools. We will use that framework for people to indicate, and principals will be there to see who is willing to offer positions and why.”
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