RHON­DA RAM­BAL­LY

The Teach­ing Ser­vice Com­mis­sion (TSC) plans to in­tro­duce new re­quire­ments for can­di­dates en­ter­ing the ser­vice from next year.TSC chair­man Hy­acinth Guy said changes in­clud­ed ob­tain­ing a Cer­tifi­cate of Good Char­ac­ter from the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) and un­der­go­ing psy­cho­me­t­ric test­ing. Teach­ers are al­ready re­quired to pos­sess a uni­ver­si­ty de­gree as man­dat­ed by the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion (MoE).Guy said the se­lec­tion sys­tem should en­sure that on­ly peo­ple who are up­stand­ing cit­i­zens, well-known in their com­mu­ni­ties and who ex­em­pli­fy the qual­i­ties of a role mod­el are se­lect­ed as teach­ers.In an in­ter­view at her of­fice in the Ser­vice Com­mis­sion Build­ing on Cipri­ani Boule­vard, Port-of-Spain, Guy said: "The re­quire­ments are chang­ing. We want to lift the stan­dards.

"You lift the stan­dards through the se­lec­tion process by set­ting bars. The min­istry has al­ready in­di­cat­ed that teach­ing is to be viewed as a pro­fes­sion and every teacher, whether pri­ma­ry or sec­ondary, needs to have a uni­ver­si­ty de­gree."Guy said a teacher could no longer en­ter the ser­vice with five CXC O-lev­el sub­jects."You can­not be made per­ma­nent any­more with five O-lev­els. You can be hired tem­porar­i­ly but you will not be made per­ma­nent un­til you have that de­gree," she said.The TSC and the MoE are col­lab­o­rat­ing to make these changes a re­al­i­ty, she as­sured.

Guy's vi­sion for the TSC is to en­sure there are high per­form­ing schools in the coun­try through teach­ers who have the tal­ent to lead schools.The TSC is one of four com­mis­sions es­tab­lished un­der the Con­sti­tu­tion with the ob­jec­tive of in­su­lat­ing pub­lic ser­vants from po­lit­i­cal bod­ies, and as such, the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to ap­point and dis­ci­pline pub­lic ser­vants is placed un­der the com­mis­sions.The role of the TSC is to ap­point per­sons to hold or act in of­fices of the Teach­ing Ser­vice; make ap­point­ments or trans­fers and con­firm ap­point­ments, re­move and ex­er­cise dis­ci­pli­nary con­trol over per­sons hold­ing or act­ing in such of­fices; and en­force stan­dards of con­duct up­on such of­fi­cers.

Mis­con­duct­by teach­ers

Any al­le­ga­tion of sex­u­al mis­con­duct made against a teacher must be im­me­di­ate­ly re­port­ed by the MoE to the TSC and then the Com­mis­sion takes steps to have those teach­ers re­moved from the school en­vi­ron­ment, Guy said."It is be­cause it is such a se­ri­ous al­le­ga­tion. In the past, the min­istry would use the 30-day pe­ri­od pro­vid­ed in the reg­u­la­tions to in­ves­ti­gate a mat­ter."It would then rec­om­mend whether the teacher should be sus­pend­ed pend­ing de­ter­mi­na­tion of the is­sue.

"It was clear­ly an un­ten­able sit­u­a­tion to have a teacher against whom an al­le­ga­tion of sex­u­al mis­con­duct was made to con­tin­ue to be in the class­room with­in that 30 day pe­ri­od. The TSC took steps to have the teacher re­moved from the school pend­ing the rec­om­men­da­tion by the in­ves­ti­ga­tor," Guy said.She said the risk was to the school chil­dren and this had to be min­imised."You need to take the per­son away im­me­di­ate­ly while the mat­ter is be­ing in­ves­ti­gat­ed."So we said you know what, when those kinds of charges come up, just let us know and we will act un­der these reg­u­la­tions im­me­di­ate­ly to take the per­son out of the school while you (MoE) in­ves­ti­gates," Guy said.

She said any al­le­ga­tion of sex­u­al abuse should be re­port­ed to the po­lice and prin­ci­pals should not at­tempt to deal with such mat­ters on their own.Ac­cord­ing to quar­ter­ly re­ports sub­mit­ted by the Dis­ci­pli­nary Di­vi­sion of the TSC, as at March 31 there were 33 cas­es of aban­don­ment of du­ties, ten cas­es re­lat­ed to crim­i­nal charges of which six were for al­leged sex­u­al mis­con­duct and 19 cas­es of al­leged mis­con­duct.How­ev­er, cas­es date as far back to 2001 in some in­stances.Guy said the ten crim­i­nal charges in­clud­ed bug­gery, in­de­cent as­sault, pos­ses­sion of mar­i­jua­na and un­law­ful and ma­li­cious wound­ing.She said the on­ly ac­tion which could be tak­en was for the ac­cused teacher to be re­moved from the school, pend­ing the out­come of the court case.

If, how­ev­er, a teacher is found guilty and it hap­pened be­fore, Guy said, he or she would be dis­missed from the ser­vice.She said it took a long time to col­lect in­for­ma­tion on teach­ers who aban­doned their du­ties."It takes a while to get the in­for­ma­tion from the min­istry in or­der to take the teach­ers out the sys­tem."We have been work­ing with them in try­ing to get them to do their ad­min­is­tra­tive work a lot faster, but we still find it isn't fast enough."Ac­cord­ing to the TSC's reg­u­la­tions, any teacher who fails to show up for du­ty for 30 days is deemed to have aban­doned the job.

In­ves­ti­ga­tors too slow

Guy made it clear that the TSC is not re­spon­si­ble for con­duct­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tions.She said in­ves­ti­ga­tions were still pend­ing for cas­es as far back as 2008."We have met with the per­ma­nent sec­re­tary of the MoE and have in­di­cat­ed that the ap­point­ed of­fi­cers were tak­ing an in­or­di­nate­ly long time to con­duct their in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to al­le­ga­tions of mis­con­duct."She said a let­ter was sent to the min­istry in April list­ing out­stand­ing in­ves­ti­gat­ing re­ports and a re­quest was made to have the names of the in­ves­ti­gat­ing of­fi­cers so that they could be held ac­count­able."That is where the lapse is-the in­ves­ti­ga­tion," Guy said.

She said the min­istry had a pol­i­cy on dis­ci­pline which re­quires prin­ci­pals and su­per­vi­sors to take a pro­gres­sive ap­proach which starts with di­ag­nos­ing the prob­lem and in­ves­ti­gat­ing the com­plaint; con­duct in­ter­views and take ac­tion; pro­vide coun­selling, give a writ­ten warn­ing and then a fi­nal warn­ing.Guy said when a teacher's be­hav­iour doesn't change, the com­plaint was re­ferred to the TSC and was then deemed an al­le­ga­tion of mis­con­duct.Such cas­es in­clude late com­ing, ir­reg­u­lar­i­ty and ab­sen­teeism, or any oth­er be­hav­iour list­ed as mis­con­duct in the pol­i­cy.How­ev­er, she said, the TSC found that cas­es of ha­bit­u­al ir­reg­u­lar­i­ty and per­sis­tent late com­ing hard­ly ever get to the TSC.

"Very few find them­selves here and what we did is that we in­di­cat­ed to the min­istry that we want­ed re­ports on a termly ba­sis on teach­ers who have ex­ceed­ed a cer­tain amount of min­utes and oc­ca­sions late."When we got that, we asked whether they ap­plied the pro­gres­sive dis­ci­pli­nary pol­i­cy and if they did not then they were asked to do so; that way we can deal with the is­sues of in­dis­ci­pline among teach­ers," Guy said.

Test­ing for psy­chos

By next year, all new teach­ers will un­der­go psy­cho­me­t­ric test­ing.Guy said the TSC was work­ing to­wards this and four TSC em­ploy­ees have al­ready re­ceived train­ing."We asked and the Di­rec­tor of Per­son­nel Ad­min­is­tra­tion sent four of­fi­cers on train­ing and we will be call­ing on them to look at the role and func­tions of an en­try lev­el teacher; de­sign a pro­file and de­vel­op a tem­plate that can be used as part of the se­lec­tion process for new teach­ers," she said."They will be re­quired to un­der­take an on­line eval­u­a­tion (psy­cho­me­t­ric test) and the re­port will be con­sid­ered to be part of the over­all in­ter­view process for the se­lec­tion of a teacher."Guy said the re­port would give the per­cent­ages for var­i­ous fac­tors such as in­tegri­ty and cred­i­bil­i­ty.

Com­bined with this, Guy said, teach­ers would be re­quired to present a Cer­tifi­cate of Good Char­ac­ter from the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice.She said the TSC would work with chair­man of the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion Prof Ramesh De­osaran, who is al­so a mem­ber of the TSC, to find a faster way to ob­tain the doc­u­ment.She said: "We have to lift our stan­dards in terms of the se­lec­tion process be­cause these peo­ple have to be in­ter­viewed to al­so de­ter­mine whether they have the char­ac­ter­is­tics to be­come a teacher and that is where the psy­cho­me­t­ric test­ing comes in."

Fill­ing va­can­cies asuc­cess but a chal­lenge

Guy said while fill­ing va­can­cies was "a suc­cess area for us" it is still a chal­lenge.She said cur­rent­ly there were 63 va­can­cies for prin­ci­pals and 36 for vice-prin­ci­pals and the TSC was in the process of fill­ing them. These are po­si­tions that be­came va­cant on­ly this year.Guy said be­cause the MoE had not re­vised the re­quire­ments for the po­si­tion of a pri­ma­ry school vice- prin­ci­pal there were hun­dreds of ap­pli­cants to fill a small num­bers of va­can­cies."To be a vice-prin­ci­pal, writ­ten in that po­si­tion de­scrip­tion is still five O-lev­els," she ex­plained.

"It is still five O-lev­els, a cer­tifi­cate in teach­ing and some in-ser­vice train­ing. So do you know what hap­pens when we put out an ad­ver­tise­ment? We get hun­dreds of teach­ers ap­ply­ing."Guy said each ap­pli­cant has to be in­ter­viewed be­cause of a prece­dent from the court.She said in sev­er­al "board" schools the va­can­cies for pri­ma­ry school prin­ci­pals would not be filled be­cause there are not enough qual­i­fied can­di­dates. She said the TSC can­not ap­point a prin­ci­pal to a board school with­out its per­mis­sion.Guy said there was not an abun­dance of can­di­dates who "suit­able" to be ap­point­ed prin­ci­pal of a board school. Catholic, An­gli­can, Pres­by­ter­ian, Mus­lim and Hin­du schools are run by boards.

Guy called on the boards "to look at what is hap­pen­ing" in their schools since there is a short­age of can­di­dates who meet the cri­te­ria.She said can­di­dates had to be of the faith and liv­ing the val­ue sys­tem placed by the boards.Guy said: "The peo­ple who are com­ing through that sys­tem . . . they don't have that depth and breadth of ex­pe­ri­ence."So of these 63 po­si­tions for prin­ci­pals, of which the ma­jor­i­ty is for pri­ma­ry schools, a num­ber of them will not be filled be­cause we don't have suit­able can­di­dates."While we know we took steps to fill them, we didn't have suit­able can­di­dates."

Guy said 17 of the po­si­tions to be filled in board schools in­clude Catholic, Pres­by­ter­ian and An­gli­can in that or­der. She is ex­pect­ed to meet with each board soon."If we are see­ing this hap­pen­ing then over time it is go­ing to get worse be­cause the crop of peo­ple you have com­ing up are not suf­fi­cient­ly sea­soned to hold a po­si­tion of prin­ci­pal," she saidAc­cord­ing to Guy, the biggest chal­lenge in fill­ing va­can­cies was do­ing a prop­er short-list.She said if one va­can­cy ex­ists and there are 20 ap­pli­cants, the TSC shouldn't have to in­ter­view the 20 but se­lect the ones who meet the re­quire­ments. How­ev­er, the TSC is forced to in­ter­view all ap­pli­cants with ba­sic re­quire­ments.

NPTA: Ex­cel­lent news

Pres­i­dent of the Na­tion­al Par­ent Teacher As­so­ci­a­tion (NPTA) Zena Ra­matali praised the pro­posed new en­try re­quire­ments. She said the as­so­ci­a­tion had been clam­our­ing for im­ple­men­ta­tion of those plans for a long time."This is ex­cel­lent news. We wel­come that and I hope it is not talk but that it will come to fruition."Most times we hear about plans but they are nev­er im­ple­ment­ed."We want the TSC to get se­ri­ous with some of these teach­ers," Ra­matali said.

Her con­cern, how­ev­er, is the ap­point­ment of teach­ers from de­nom­i­na­tion­al schools to Gov­ern­ment schools. She called on the TSC to in­ves­ti­gate this mat­ter.Ra­matali said: "We have dis­cov­ered prob­lems with teach­ers who have spent years in de­nom­i­na­tion­al schools and are ac­cept­ed and ap­point­ed by the TSC in Gov­ern­ment schools."Teach­ers who are re­ject­ed by their boards should not be ac­cept­ed by the com­mis­sion."Sev­er­al at­tempts to con­tact pres­i­dent of the T&T Uni­fied Teach­ers' As­so­ci­a­tion (TTUTA) Rous­tan Job were un­suc­cess­ful.