Lazy PE teachers

THE EDITOR, Sir:

We endorse the Jamaica Moves campaign being promoted in schools by the health ministry. However, the Ministry of Education must examine the broader role of physical education (PE) in schools and the practitioners. Most PE teachers are great at their jobs and are good at multitasking, even extending their services to coaching school sporting teams. While we commend these teachers for their tremendous effort in ensuring that our children remain physically active, there are others that you could consider to be lazy and hiding behind incompetent school administrators who facilitate their lacklustre performance.

Recently, I happened to have a discussion with a parent of a popular primary school near the busy Half-Way Tree business district, who said that for the past four weeks, her child was not afforded a chance to participate in PE classes because of the absence of the PE teacher. The parent enquired about the situation with the school but was given frivolous excuses that the assigned PE teacher had to travel with the school teams to competitions, even though these teams had separate assigned coaches. Further discussions with the parent revealed that the school in question was assigned an additional PE teacher since September 2018, hence the excuse doesn't make sense.

Why are some school administrators shielding these lazy PE teachers who find every opportunity to be absent from their classes? This matter need to be looked at seriously by the school management and ministry so as not to rob our children of what is due to them.

R.B.P.