Latest update December 12th, 2024 1:00 AM
May 05, 2011 News
President of the Guyana Teachers’ Union (GTU), Colin Bynoe, has said that persons aspiring to join the teaching profession in Guyana may have to undergo a certification process.
Those already in the teaching system may have to face teacher certification panels on a regular basis, he added. He said that the GTU has been pushing the government hard for higher remuneration for increased qualification.
Bynoe said that this position was agreed to at the last COHSOD meeting in Antigua, which was attended by all Ministers of Education in the Caribbean region.
“Teacher certification is around the corner. Ministers of Education around the Caribbean agreed that there must be standardization of educational performances in the Caribbean”, he said.
Bynoe added that Jamaica, Trinidad and Barbados have all moved ahead with this process. Under this procedure, teachers will have to have certain qualifications to enter the teaching system and to stay in the system.
Even though they attain those qualifications, teachers will have to maintain those standards.
“If Guyana sets aside that every five years they’d like to review their standards, it means that every five years, you will have to have a new licence as a teacher. And unless you have a license, you will not be able to teach,” he noted.
According to Bynoe, subject specialists and professionals will make up review panels which would interview the new recruits and currently- employed teachers in the system, check the work that the teachers would have done and decide whether or not those teachers are competent enough to be employed or continue in the profession.
“They are certifying you. These are professionals who are coming to do this, consorted professionals; they have no side.
And they [will] say [name of teacher], yes, you are competent enough to go on to be licensed for five more years,” he posited.
Bynoe said that other countries are moving fast in this regard and Guyana will be pressured soon to do it right.
He added that all categories of teachers will be subjected to these panels.
And commenting on the recent package entered into with the government, the union head has assured teachers that the newly-inked deal was the best the union could have bargained for and he urged them to take some time to research to see what is happening around the world and compare it to what is happening in Guyana.
He alluded to an editorial in the Kaieteur News a few weeks ago that dealt with teachers’ salaries and salary negotiations. He, however, said cautiously that teachers have not been performing.
“They need to understand that when the Ministry [of Education] would agree to all these things, it behooves them [teachers] to perform and to produce.
“Teachers need to understand that this means that their basic effort that is required by the Ministry [of Education] is for them to be regular and punctual at school; to be always prepared; to teach the people’s children during the five hours that they have contact with them; to make sure that they take timeout to research, to be on top of the subject content that they are teaching; and for them to know that there is something coming by the name of professional standards in education, that if they don’t pull their socks up now, that sooner or later in that process, they can be consumed when that process comes into effect.
“And as a union, the time has come for us— just like lawyers and doctors—if you look carefully at what is happening, there is a certain awe about how they operate, and the type of professional standards that is expected of them,” he said.
He recalled the time when teachers were respected in the communities.
“We’re begging for the type of respectability to the system to come forward through the efforts and performance of our teachers; and that as a union, we will continue to fight to make their working conditions better, day after day, so if they [the teachers] keep their sides of the bargain in terms of their responsibilities, we will keep our side of the bargain in terms of the representation of their rights,” he noted. (Leon Suseran)
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