Akash Sama­roo

akash.sama­roo@cnc3.co.tt

Se­nior Re­porter/ Pro­duc­er

The two unions that deal with teach­ers at the pri­ma­ry, sec­ondary and ter­tiary lev­els are pleased with the re­turn of the Min­istry of Ter­tiary Ed­u­ca­tion and Skills Train­ing as they be­lieve the task of man­ag­ing all sec­tors ef­fec­tive­ly is too big for one min­istry.

Dr Michael Dowlath was on Sat­ur­day ap­point­ed Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion and Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has again brought back the Min­istry of Ter­tiary Ed­u­ca­tion and Skills Train­ing which is now un­der the con­trol of Pro­fes­sor Prakash Per­sad. This was a min­istry in the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship Cab­i­net of 2010-2015.

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Uni­fied Teach­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTUTA) has a wish list for the new Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Michael Dowlath. At the top of it is en­sur­ing teach­ers get the pro­mo­tions they worked hard to at­tain.

TTUTA First Vice Pres­i­dent Adesh Dwari­ka said this is a long-stand­ing is­sue that they hope Dowlath can fi­nal­ly put an end to.

Dwari­ka ex­plained, “There is the UTT (Uni­ver­si­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go)/USC (Uni­ver­si­ty of the South­ern Caribbean) sit­u­a­tion of 2010, where those stu­dents were of­fered a schol­ar­ship by the uni­ver­si­ty to at­tend UTT up­on the clos­ing of the teach­ers’ col­leges and they were ad­vised to do var­i­ous spe­cial­i­sa­tions, pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary.

“Those who did the pri­ma­ry were up­grad­ed to T1 Pri­ma­ry, but those who did the sec­ondary spe­cial­i­sa­tion ba­si­cal­ly have been in no man’s land for the last 15 years.”

Dwari­ka said those teach­ers earned de­grees but are still con­sid­ered as­sis­tant teach­ers.

He said the is­sues re­gard­ing up­grades went be­yond this ex­am­ple.

“Teach­ers have tak­en the op­por­tu­ni­ty to pay at uni­ver­si­ty to go and do the rel­e­vant cours­es, to up­grade them­selves from T1 to T3 or from T2 to T3 all the rel­e­vant cours­es.

“How­ev­er, they are stymied by the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion and the Teach­ing Ser­vices Com­mis­sion (TSC) in terms of the up­grades. So, some of them have been wait­ing 15 years plus years for up­grades,” he added.

He said he is aware that in­fra­struc­tur­al is­sues might be a pri­or­i­ty as they al­so take up sig­nif­i­cant fi­nanc­ing but said one of the ma­jor is­sues is “teach­ers’ ap­point­ment to their cor­rect po­si­tions in terms of up­grades and, of course, in terms of in­cre­ments. Those are the ma­jor is­sues that we would like to see Dr Dowlath fo­cus­ing on.”

Dwari­ka said as a sea­soned ed­u­ca­tor he hopes the new min­is­ter has em­pa­thy for them.

“We had a for­mer Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion who had a back­ground in ed­u­ca­tion, and, well, we didn’t get much in terms of that go­ing for­ward, so we are hop­ing that Dr Dowlath would make that dif­fer­ence.”

TTUTA is hop­ing that a sep­a­rate min­istry for ter­tiary in­sti­tu­tions, it will free up Dowlath to fo­cus on the pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary schools.

Head of the West In­dies Group of Uni­ver­si­ty Teach­ers (WIGUT) is al­so pleased to see the re­turn of the Min­istry of Ter­tiary Ed­u­ca­tion and Skills Train­ing which is now head­ed by the for­mer Pres­i­dent of UTT and a for­mer Head of the De­part­ment of Me­chan­i­cal En­gi­neer­ing at UWI.

Dr In­di­ra Ram­per­sad said man­ag­ing the pri­ma­ry, sec­ondary and ter­tiary sys­tems is too much for one min­is­ter.

“The Uni­ver­si­ty (of the West In­dies) I think suf­fered tremen­dous­ly un­der the last ad­min­is­tra­tion be­cause they were merged un­der one min­istry for the last ten years. Ter­tiary in­sti­tu­tions, we have so many of them so to put ed­u­ca­tion un­der one ban­ner when pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary all un­der one, I think it was very dif­fi­cult for the Min­is­ter to nav­i­gate all of that and to deal with them.”

Ram­per­sad added, “So I wel­come that move, I wel­come the split. We would have seen how many protests we had from var­i­ous unions on the cam­pus as well and that al­so en­gages the min­is­ter of ed­u­ca­tion, both min­is­ters of ed­u­ca­tion and fi­nance.”

She said WIGUT would like to meet with Min­is­ter Per­sad to hear his plans and to share theirs.