Young, fresh team at York Castle

Administrators at two of the main high schools in St Ann have committed to maintain their institutions’ levels of excellence despite the teacher shortage currently affecting the education system.

Principal of York Castle, Raymon Treasure, says things have started on a positive note.

He reports that last year, 13 teachers resigned from their posts at the school; this year, the figure fell to seven and these posts have all been filled. He says while the team is young, there is no shortage.

“We currently have a very young team of teachers, but with guidance and support from the senior management team, we should be able to maintain our standards,” Treasure told The Gleaner on Monday.

At Brown’s Town High School, things were a bit different, with principal Alfred Thomas reporting several vacant positions. He anticipates however that these will be filled as interviews are scheduled for this week.

“Thus far we have received 12 resignations. We did receive some resignations in a timely manner which ensured we could have done replacements,” Thomas said. “We ...have replaced seven of those and we have applications for the other five posts, so we are looking to do some interviews this week.”

In the critical areas of mathematics and English, he said there are shortages of teachers, some of which however have already been addressed. Four teachers have resigned from the industrial arts department.

“For maths, we have two resignations and we have replacements for those two. For English, our literacy department, three teachers resigned and one of our special education teachers also resigned. For English, senior shift, we have some resignations and we are looking to do some interviews this week.”

To compound the situation, seven teachers and a dean of discipline are on leave but the school is “managing to replace them” by using teachers from the other shift, as the school remains on the shift system.

Thomas said some teachers on leave have actually taken up the ministry’s offer to temporarily fill some vacant positions, while others have indicated their willingness to keep make-up classes where positions have not been filled.