Of­fi­cials of the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion and the T&T Uni­fied Teach­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (TTUTA) are ex­pect­ed to meet over the next two weeks to dis­cuss the plight of al­most 100 teach­ing as­sis­tants, who want to be up­grad­ed to teach­ers.

The meet­ing was set on Fri­day as a group of teacher as­sis­tants from pri­ma­ry schools and their TTUTA rep­re­sen­ta­tives staged a protest out­side the min­istry's head­quar­ters at St Vin­cent Street, Port-of-Spain.

In an in­ter­view, TTUTA sec­ond vice-pres­i­dent Kyr­la Robin­son-Thomas ex­plained that al­though the teach­ing as­sis­tants sought and re­ceived uni­ver­si­ty qual­i­fi­ca­tions to be up­grad­ed to sec­ondary school teach­ers, they were de­nied as they were told that there were no va­can­cies in the sub­ject ar­eas they spe­cialised in.

Robin­son-Thomas claimed that as some of them have been wait­ing since 2009, they were will­ing to ac­cept be­ing con­firmed in­to the po­si­tion of a pri­ma­ry school teacher.

She claimed that they were be­ing paid as teach­ing as­sis­tants but were per­form­ing the du­ties of a teacher.

"These peo­ple are be­ing de­nied se­nior­i­ty and oth­er pro­fes­sion­al growth be­cause of the sta­tus they still hold. We are ask­ing for the of­fi­cials to meet with us to chart the way for­ward for all of us," she said.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia af­ter he had brief dis­cus­sions with the pro­test­ers, Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter An­tho­ny Gar­cia and Min­is­ter of State in the Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry Dr Lovell Fran­cis both said the par­ties would seek to re­solve the is­sue dur­ing the sched­uled meet­ing.

Both min­is­ters sug­gest­ed that the is­sue the teach­ing as­sis­tants were fac­ing was due to the fact that the de­gree pro­grammes, of­fered by some uni­ver­si­ties, in­clud­ing the Uni­ver­si­ty of T&T (UTT), did not in­clude all the cours­es which the min­istry deems as vi­tal for be­ing a teacher.

"We are not go­ing to al­low peo­ple who have not the com­pe­ten­cy to teach in­to the class­room. That will be a dere­lic­tion of du­ty on our part," Fran­cis said.

Gar­cia said that the is­sue af­fect­ing the train­ing for teach­ers was be­ing ad­dressed by the Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer (CPO), the Teach­ing Ser­vice Com­mis­sion and through Cab­i­net's re­cent­ly set Ed­u­ca­tion Pol­i­cy doc­u­ment.

Gar­cia al­so stat­ed that he did not have any is­sue with TTUTA de­cid­ing to stage the process on the min­istry's com­pound.

"They have a du­ty and we will do ours. We will work to­geth­er in the in­ter­est of ed­u­ca­tion," Gar­cia said.