The teaching service requires modification away from its colonial structure

Dear Editor,

It is difficult not to expect the Guyana Teachers Union to react most assertively to the perceived superficiality of manning the Teaching Service totally with ‘trained and licensed’ teachers, albeit from an unspecified effective date. Logic and morality would dictate that such a policy would have to be productively negotiated between the Ministry of Education and the Union. As a precursor however, the union must conduct as comprehensive a survey as possible of its membership’s, views of the proposed modification of a profound colonial job structure, as reproduced at the end of this submission. Laudable as is the aspiration may be to employ better qualified teachers, it should be quite obvious (from any distance) that it will be necessary to: reconstruct the current 29 Job Grade arrangements, the relationship of the above to the grading of schools complemented by the reduction and simultaneous expansion of the narrowest salary scales existing in any other public agency in Guyana, take opportunity to agree with the GTU on an effective Performance Appraisal System (which would of course include scores for respective examination results of students), review related criteria for promotion, increase the lowest pensionable age in the Caribbean, of 55 years to at least 60 years, and, ensure that the text of the ‘Licence’ intended does not deny teachers their constitutional and human rights; and that it is in no way punitive.

Hopefully teachers will see the announced initiative in a positive light, and as a morale and spiritual upgrade from