Teachers to get outstanding summer school payments next week
APPROXIMATELY 950 teachers are yet to receive payments for summer school work which they completed under the Ministry of Education’s Recover Smarter — National School Learning and Intervention Plan.
“I can’t say every single payment has been made but I know that, where there are outstanding payments, efforts are made to ensure that we have the correct data and that those payments will be made,” Education Minister Fayval Williams said at a post-cabinet press briefing on Wednesday.
About 17,000 students and 3,000 teachers had indicated an interest in the national summer school initiative which ran from July 5 to August 19, which was designed to help counter learning loss due to the novel coronavirus pandemic.
On Wednesday, permanent secretary in the education ministry Dr Grace Mclean revealed that so far, payments have been made to more than 2,000 teachers for summer school work.
“Based on the quality of the information that we have been receiving, especially for those teachers who are not employed in the government system or who worked at a school [where] that teacher is not employed, we had to do some detailed analysis to make sure that nobody is double-paid,” she said, adding that earlier last week the ministry made the decision to allow bursar-paid institutions to make payments to their teachers.
“We take full responsibility at the ministry for the delay in the payments. Of course, you know that we have to make sure that we have accurate information. Our teachers’ TRN (tax registration number) and banking information must be accurate and the team at central has spent quite a bit of time just calling our teachers to ensure that we have the accurate information because as we try to input on the system, the system rejects if they are not correct and so we believe that we have sorted out all the kinks,” she said.
The permanent secretary also said that the education ministry is committed to ensuring that payments will be completed by October 15.
But in a response to Jamaica Observer questions regarding the lack of remuneration in August, the ministry said that the processing of payments was set to start by September 2 and would be completed by the third week in September, once all the required details were submitted.
A number of teachers, including those from Central Branch All-age School, had complained to the Observer at the end of the programme about the delay in payment, noting that they were facing financial challenges caused by the pandemic.
The exact amount owed to the teachers was not immediately clear, but one teacher said that the payment was less than $30,000 each.