JTA welcomes plan to roll back Bill provisions
THE island’s public school teachers have welcomed the proposed roll-back of provisions in the Jamaica Teaching Council (JTC) Bill which would have made them subject to professional appraisals by the council, if retained in the legislation, which is under review by a Parliamentary joint select committee.
President of the Jamaica Teachers Association (JTA) La Sonja Harrison noted that the development is in keeping with “our submissions. It couldn’t be that persons who do not immediately supervise the teacher could be so empowered to appraise the teacher. And the claim is that the Bill is to professionalise the profession, to what end?” she told the Jamaica Observer on Friday.
The Fayval Williams-chaired committee agreed at a meeting on Thursday that it would strike out the provision under Section 7 of the Bill, instead allowing for the JTC to continuously monitor teachers under its general mandate of ensuring that practitioners meet the professional standards set out by the council.
Harrison said the JTA also anticipates favourable changes to other areas of concern which it identified in its submission to the joint select committee. “The teachers’ struggle continues as we continue the advocacy for a Bill that affords all professional courtesies to the practitioners within the sector as well as ensures their human rights are upheld,” she said.
The committee arrived at its decision following intervention from Government members who expressed the view that there was no need for a specific appraisal regime for master teachers, given that there were already monitoring tools provided for under the Master Teachers Programme.
The members — MPS Tova Hamilton and Floyd Green — argued also that the JTC is bestowed with broad powers to monitor all teachers and ensure they are operating within the ambit of the professional standards laid down by the council.
Over the months of submissions to the joint select committee by the JTA and other groups, teachers were worried that the JTC was being injected into their operations at the school level in a manner in which it neither needed to be nor the capacity to execute.
Until the amendments are made, the provision, as proposed in Section 7 of the Bill, would give the JTC the authority to assess master teachers every three years, at the national level. Prior to Thursday’s meeting of the committee it was understood that the JTC would appraise all teachers defined in the law, but chief executive officer of the JTC, Dr Winsome Gordon explained that the conducting of professional appraisals referred to in the Bill was only intended for master teachers.
Already the teachers, who are selected at the national level under the Master Teachers Programme, are assessed every three years. The JTC Bill would have codified that process into law.