Teacher shortage hits Titchfield
Portland-based school with part-time physics teachers
TWO MONTHS into the new academic year, one of the island’s top science schools, Titchfield High in Portland, is operating without a trained physics teacher for grades 9 to 13.
Principal Richard Thompson told The Sunday Gleaner that interviews are being done but he has not been able to secure any trained physics teacher for the school.
According to Thompson, though not ideal, measures have been put in place, including afterschool classes and a Saturday physics class to ensure that students are not gravely affected.
“What we have done is that we have managed to retain the services of a recently graduated student as a pre-trained teacher teaching lower-school grade nine,” said Thompson.
“We have also retained the services of two part-time teachers who are fully employed in other schools. They are essentially covering the hours that our teachers wouldn’t normally cover, but based on their timetable at their full-time jobs, we are not able to offer the subject at the time normally offered on our timetable at school,” added Thompson.
He said when regular classes end at 2:30 p.m., the part-time teachers, one for Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC) and one for Caribbean Advanced Proficiency Examination (CAPE), conduct classes from 3 to 5 p.m.
“The hours are being covered except that the students would not be able to have conversations with the teachers throughout the day if they are having issues. To arrange one-on-one work with the teachers, the students would not be able to do that because the teachers would have to go back to their fulltime jobs,” said Thompson.
He noted that the students who attend these evening classes cannot fully participate in the life of the school, as the hours cause them to miss out on schedule extracurricular activities.
HAVE TO WORK ON SATURDAY
Family time would also be affected as they have to travel to classes on a Saturday.
“I’m sure it will affect their ability to do certain extracurricular activities that they would want to do on the days that they have to stay over to do physics, and I see where it would affect them on a Saturday, having to travel into Port Antonio if they live outside of Port Antonio,” said Thompson.
The principal said he has reached out to the Ministry of Education, which is aware of the situation and has promised to assist him in finding physics teachers. He has also reached out to colleges seeking their assistance for two full-time persons.
“I need someone like weeks ago, we are absolutely in need, we would prefer to have the person full-time, fully engage, fully employed to the school, we would want that to be immediate,” said Thompson.
NOT NEW
He added that the school is also looking a language arts teacher up to the CAPE level.
Teacher shortage is not new for Jamaica as the island has been grappling with keeping qualified teachers in key subjects at work for more than 10 years.
Areas such as mathematics and science have been the hardest hit by teachers quitting the classroom, with subjects such as geography and religious education experiencing a teacher shortage in recent times.
In 2015, the British government went on a mass recruitment drive in Jamaica, hiring more than 100 teachers to work in its school system.
Low salaries, large classes and limited resources have been cited by several teachers among the reasons the have moved to classroom in places such as Britain, where they can earn up to five times more than they would in Jamaica.