‘There were very few instances during my tenure on the TSC where there was manifest unfairness in teacher promotions’

Dear Editor,

After some months abroad, I recently returned to Guyana and it was brought to my attention, and I read with interest, the report in Stabroek News of Friday, November 11, 2016 under the banner headline: ‘High Court orders TSC to review applications for teacher promotions.’

Within that report on page 21, the following words appear:

“However, the GTU yesterday thanked its nominee, Avril Crawford, whose vigilance made the union aware of an issue which has gone undetected for almost 20 years. ‘For the last 20 years or so, our teachers have suffered and we are elated that justice has been served and they will no longer have to do so,’ GTU President Mark Lyte said.”

Now, it is public knowledge, publicly documented (including in Stabroek News) that I was the GTU nominee on every single Teaching Service Commission appointed between 1994 and 2008, when I demitted office and went off to England. Mr Lyte’s remarks in the context of the promotions process used by the TSC for the 2015 cycle, therefore, seemed clearly to cover the period of my service at the TSC. I was so startled by the inaccuracy of that alleged comment that I wrote to Mr Lyte on December 8 drawing his attention to some facts and requesting him to cause some modification of his alleged remarks to be published in Stabroek News with some degree of prominence. I sent him a reminder on December 14, but up to today (December 19) there has been no response.

The GTU records should show that when I had the honour to serve on the TSC as the nominee of the GTU, I made forceful and successful representations with the encouragement of then GTU Presidents Bertram Hamilton and Sydney Murdock, and with professional support ‒ then and thereafter – from the then Chief Education Officer Ed Caesar. Those representations, backed by mountains of written and oral proposals and arguments brought the promotions arrangements in the TSC into the twentieth century and consistently ensured greater fairness, openness, and accountability.

I can think of very few instances during my entire tenure on the TSC where there was manifest unfairness in promotions, and in nearly every instance, political intervention at high levels seemed to be present. One matter involved appointment to the headship of a secondary school on the Corentyne, and I fought that matter relentlessly. As fate would have it, that teacher who was being dealt with manifestly unfairly then is now a member of the TSC, and can testify to my advocacy in that matter. Another involved promotion to a secondary school on the West Demerara and led to a series of supporting letters in SN. Yet another matter involved promotion of a Grade E headmaster to a Grade B school in clear violation of the rules. My advocacy was publicly supported not only by the teachers of the area but by a thundering editorial that appeared in the Sunday Stabroek. Indeed, after I lost that battle, I commented in SN: “The shame is greater than the victory.”

During my tenure on the TSC, the publishing of a list of those whom the TSC proposed to promote was introduced and teachers given the opportunity to appeal. Appeals received were usually dealt with on their merits and any necessary changes made. Occasionally, after the final list was published, a number of teachers complained to me that they were discriminated against during the promotions process. In every single instance brought to my attention – no matter which Commissioner had done the initial vetting – I checked the records, re-calculated the points, and found the decision to be not incorrect. The problem, generally, was that teachers seemed not sufficiently aware of the details of the points system. Without access to the application form of the teacher complained about, they were not able to calculate the points earned by that teacher, and, indeed, to know the order of preference which that teacher had set out in relation to the posts he/she had applied for.

With respect, Mr Lyte might do well to go carefully through the three cartons of GTU historical material that I sent the GTU on October 30, 2013. It might be of use, too, if he took a look at Cave (2005), the GTU Occasional Paper in which I examined in great detail some of the problems faced by the TSC when the Ministry of Education intervened in the promotions process on July 12, 2004 and indicated that the Ministry, through the office of the Minister would be making the promotions in the schools with school boards. That was after the TSC had advertised all the senior vacancies in schools of all kinds that the Ministry had asked the TSC to advertise; and, indeed, after the provisional promotions list was published!

The TSC in my time was, in some

ways, a microcosm of the macrocosm that was the larger Guyana society. That said, it was my duty to be on guard, especially in relation to promotions.

I know absolutely nothing of the TSC promotions arrangements subsequent to my demitting office in 2008. In my time, processing of applications for promotion took some three months ‒including working on some Saturdays and Sundays. From time to time, subsequent to 2008, when I was in the country when the vacancy ad was published by the TSC, I had cause to write to SN pointing to various infelicities in the vacancy ads. That sort of scrutiny is the GTU’s job, not mine.

For me, as an outsider, if things at the TSC since my demitting office are as bad as the media reports seem to suggest, should not important questions be asked of the persons who were “the APNU nominee”, the GTU nominee, and the Chief Education Officer at the material times?

Yours faithfully, George N Cave