Latest update April 25th, 2024 12:59 AM
Mar 30, 2017 News
-Union feels vindicated by outcome
Several teachers who were identified for promotions on the previous Teaching Service
Commission (TSC’)s preliminary list of senior promotions have not found their names on a recently revised list. This development has occurred because these teachers following a court-mandated review were found to not be suitably qualified for positions for which they had applied.
This is according President of the Guyana Teachers’ Union, Mark Lyte, who noted that “the union feels vindicated that its call for a review has yielded substantial changes. I have perused the document [new promotion list] and found that there are 73 changes. These include people changing in terms of the names that were on the previous list,” Lyte informed.
The GTU had, in 2015, moved to the court to prevent the TSC from going ahead with its preliminary list of promotions in light of the fact that it had concerns with the promotion process. The court matter in this regard only came to finality in November of last year with the court supporting the GTU’s call for a review of the promotion process.
“We insisted that something was amiss with the promotion process and we are happy that the court ruled in our favour…The list that we are now seeing proves that our concerns were valid,” Lyte said.
“We found there were a number of changes in the list,” the GTU President said. He qualified this submission by pointing out that while there were about four teachers who were named on the previous list to be promoted to Mathematics Head of Department; at least one of these names has been removed from the list.
This is in light of the fact, Lyte noted, that the criteria for this promotion required that eligible teachers have a degree in the subject area. “We found that one person who was appointed there has since been removed from the list because upon their [TSC’s] perusal that person was not eligible,” Lyte noted.
Under the promotion category of English Head of Department, Lyte said that the previous list contained seven names. However, the reviewed list reveals that four of these names have since been removed, as these persons again were found to be not eligible for the senior promotion. Further, Lyte revealed that two names that were not previously there have been added.
There were similar occurrences for the position of Allied Arts Head of Department whereby TSC in its earlier preliminary list had promoted one individual who is no longer on the revised list since that person did not meet the criteria.
Lyte also detailed multiple instances where there were identical occurrences in the promotion of Head Teachers and Deputy Head Teachers of various levels of schools.
“All of these are significant and most of them [promotion categories] had several glaring,” related Lyte.
According to him, although the wait for the changes to materialise was long, “it was worth it. Now the eligible teachers are being duly placed in their various positions.”
Teachers have approximately two weeks after the publication of the list to issue appeals to the TSC after which a final list will be publicised. This will allow the teachers to assume their new positions at the start of the new school term, according to Ramson.
Ramson in an invited comment to this publication said that completing the promotion process at this time, is in keeping with a promise made by the TSC to the GTU. The promise, according to Ramson, is that teachers will be promoted in time for the upcoming school term.
“We made sure we kept our promise. We worked tediously and it meant even if we had to go late into the nights we would have done it because we made that promise and we are people of our word,” asserted the TSC Chairperson.
The promotions will be retroactive to September 1, 2015. “I think this is a plus,” said Lyte as he considered that while a number of teachers will be happy with the development several of them will also be disgruntled because their names have been removed from the list.
“We have to live with that because our work is in the interest of all teachers and not just some of them. The process must be fair and equitable… TSC has proven through this review that over the years there may have been a number of people who were not given the promotions due to them because of this flawed process…so we are happy that it has been addressed,” asserted Lyte.
He continued, “The TSC has completed the appointments and what we have noted must be brought to the public’s attention…The gist of this thing was to ensure that TSC appointed the people who were eligible and due for the positions they applied for barring the comments of the officers.”
It is believed that the promotion process over the years has been influenced by certain regional officers, a state of affairs that Lyte hopes will become a thing of the past.
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