Expert urges caution in definition of teacher in proposed law
Published:Saturday | April 23, 2022 | 12:05 AMEdmond Campbell/Senior Parliamentary Reporter
Head of the School of Education at The University of the West Indies, Mona, Dr Marcia Rainford, has expressed concern that the definition of a teacher in the Jamaica Teaching Council Act, 2022, eliminates most educators at the early childhood level as a significant percentage of them only have vocational training.
The proposed law, which is seeking to establish a professional body for the teaching profession and to introduce a regime for licensing and registration of all government-paid teachers, sets out a specific definition for teachers.
It defines a teacher as an individual “who, having been admitted to an educational teaching programme duly recognised in the country in which the person is qualified, has completed a bachelor’s degree in education or its equivalent or a first degree with a postgraduate diploma in education and thereby satisfies the qualifications to be registered as a teacher under this act”.
However, Rainford, who made a submission to the joint select committee reviewing the bill on Thursday, noted that an estimated 75 per cent of teachers at the early childhood level had received vocational training, which does not equate to a bachelor’s degree.
“We recommend very careful consideration be given as to whether such persons with vocational-level training would no longer be qualified to teach at the pre-primary level,” the School of Education head told committee members.
She said that this would have serious consequences for pre-primary education at this time.
Rainford is of the view that the early childhood education sector had been neglected for a long time.
“For so many years, the Government has not really taken responsibility for that sector,” she said.
The veteran educator made it clear that she was not recommending that the committee expand the definition of teachers to include those trained at the vocational level. However, she said that some concessions should be made to allow these persons to continue to teach while the Government provides the resources to the Early Childhood Commission to offer full-time scholarships for teachers at that level to be trained.
She acknowledged that the CHASE Fund has done a phenomenal job in providing partial scholarships for teachers in the sector. However, she said that this was not sufficient to address the needs in the early childhood education sector.
“The Government pays one trained teacher in each basic school. This means that when teachers have spent money for training, based on what early childhood teachers earn, it would take about one year for the teachers to recoup the cost for one year of training.
“There is, therefore, no incentive for trained teachers to remain at that level, and this perpetuates a system that attracts the least qualified persons.”
Rainford called for the long-standing problems facing the early childhood sector to be tackled urgently.
“My fear about early childhood education is that we just always feel that they are babies and they are young and will grow. They don’t grow to become better if the foundation is weak, and we have lived for many years with that idea, and it has to change,” she noted.