Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

Con­cerned about the ed­u­ca­tion of scores of stu­dents due to the short­age of five teach­ers at the Fifth Com­pa­ny Bap­tist School, the Par­ent Teacher As­so­ci­a­tion (PTA) wants the va­can­cies filled be­fore the new school term opens.

The call comes as pupils of Stan­dard One, Two and Three class­es have been with­out an as­signed teacher and de­pen­dent on teach­ers from oth­er class­es, and even the prin­ci­pal, to teach and su­per­vise them for the last term.

In an in­ter­view out­side the school in Moru­ga on Tues­day, PTA pres­i­dent Giselle Lewis al­so called for four more On the Job Trainees (OJTs) to be as­signed to the school, which cur­rent­ly has one OJT.

Lewis said, “We have the prin­ci­pal leav­ing the of­fice to mann class­es. We had our Stan­dard Five teacher teach­ing two class­es at a time and we do not even have sub­sti­tute teach­ers to as­sist in this area. So we are ask­ing the min­istry to as­sist us with that in the up­com­ing term so our chil­dren will ben­e­fit the best from their teach­ers and they will be able to get in­tact with their school work go­ing for­ward.

She added that par­ents were vol­un­teer­ing in the li­brary and dur­ing the lunch pe­ri­od.

Lewis said cur­rent­ly 10 teach­ers teach and su­per­vise more than 500 pupils.

She said the prin­ci­pal sent cor­re­spon­dence to the min­istry in­form­ing of­fi­cials of the sit­u­a­tion.

“We de­cid­ed as the PTA to take it up­on our­selves to let the min­istry know that our chil­dren are be­hind in work be­cause the time that a teacher takes to teach her class and run to an­oth­er class burns her out. It burns out the class and the teacher will even­tu­al­ly get tired and we don’t want that par­tic­u­lar teacher to be tired so that she can’t fo­cus on her class.” Lewis said

She felt they were not be­ing tak­en se­ri­ous­ly by the au­thor­i­ties be­cause it’s a rur­al school.

De­spite the sit­u­a­tion, PTA sec­re­tary Jemi­ma Lewis-Rag­bir said the pupils who wrote the SEA ex­am were not af­fect­ed and passed for good schools, but the sit­u­a­tion has been tough on some par­ents.

When con­tact­ed, Sharon Man­groo, chair­man of the As­so­ci­a­tion of De­nom­i­na­tion­al Boards, said the Pres­by­ter­ian Board’s law­suit against the Teach­ing Ser­vice Com­mis­sion is ex­pect­ed to come up for hear­ing lat­er this month.

She said there are over 40 teach­ing va­can­cies with­in the Catholic de­nom­i­na­tion­al schools, but pro­ject­ed to in­crease to about 60 va­can­cies by the end of the year.

Re­spond­ing to a What­sapp Mes­sen­ger re­gard­ing the PTA’s con­cerns, Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly re­it­er­at­ed that teacher re­cruit­ment is the re­mit of the Teach­ing Ser­vice Com­mis­sion.

She said in­ter­views for short­list­ed ap­pli­cants for Teach­ers I at de­nom­i­na­tion­al pri­ma­ry schools are be­ing done by the min­istry un­der del­e­gat­ed au­thor­i­ty from the com­mis­sion, and a re­port will be sent to the com­mis­sion by Mon­day.

“The TSC will then re­vert to the Or­der of Mer­it List from which De­nom­i­na­tion­al Schools can se­lect teach­ing staff, which is an­tic­i­pat­ed to be in time for the next aca­d­e­m­ic year,” she said.

The min­is­ter added that de­nom­i­na­tion­al pri­ma­ry schools were of­fered ac­cess to the Or­der of Mer­it List avail­able at the min­istry for gov­ern­ment pri­ma­ry schools, in the in­ter­im, to make se­lec­tions for sub­sti­tute teach­ers, which would have al­le­vi­at­ed va­can­cies to some ex­tent.