Dear Editor,
I note with worry and also much anger the replies of GTU President Mark Lyte and Mr George Cave in the print media recently regarding my letters in the press which highlighted the actions against dozens of teachers in the High Court, especially as they relate to my own preliminary promotion to Head of the English Department.
I echo the call of Mr Cave by asking the question, ‘What is the Education Service coming to?’ Indeed, the system has become as dysfunctional as can be over the years. To have me, a teacher trained in English being forced to resort to doing Social Studies at the university in Berbice instead of what I loved doing, English, because there was no English being offered there raises the question, what is the education service coming to? A teacher ‘wasted’ 4 years of his life studying for a degree in an area where he knew he might very well have no scope in terms of his professional career, but still followed through because he had education and teaching at heart, and wanted to upgrade his qualifications and professional skills. What is the system coming to? This is a teacher who achieved a Grade One with Distinction in the subject area in question, and was trained in English at the Teachers Training College of the Ministry of Education. However, none of those merited him being considered for a subject-related (as well as administrative) position at a secondary school. Why then do we have a training college allowing people to specialize in subject areas if not to equip them with a base to “organize the teaching of that specialist subject?” What is the education service coming to?
What is the education service coming to when you have a trained English teacher having completed a two-year Ministry of Education course in English but this doesn’t seem to have any weight in relation to the current promotional guidelines to which Mr Cave alluded? What is the education service coming to when you have a teacher completing an Education Management course which is supposed to create scope for administration and management in any supervisory position, but is not even catered for in the TSC guidelines that Mr Cave checked?
What is the system coming to when the teacher’s application last year for promotion was not his first, but rather his third or so, but he was refused year after year? Mr Cave is questioning why my HM or Regional Educational Officer did not put remarks on my application so as to have prevented my preliminary appointment as English Head of Department at Vrymans High. I would not question their comments but it is those people on the ground and in the field who see what’s happening in education and how someone could function who can really tell if a candidate is capable of a job. They would have seen that person at work and would have first-hand knowledge of someone’s capability for a job, not the ones in their high offices in Georgetown.
It’s a shame and disgrace that my “ineligibility” for heading an English department at any secondary school is coming in for lashes when the university has not even produced many persons with a degree in English (no fault of mine!), but which has recently begun to do so with fresh trainees out of the CPCE who would graduate in about two years.
They would very well be eligible and would most likely be selected for the position over a teacher who was trained years before, graduated years before from the university and had more administrative and curriculum- based experience in the area in question! Indeed, what is our education service coming to? I pray I might not be in the system by then to witness the furtherance of these career-related injustices.
What is our education service to coming when we have a teacher finishing off his Masters of Education degree ‒ in education administration of all areas ‒ something he knew would clearly have no bearing on his eligibility for the post of head of department for which he applied. However, he still went ahead knowing he would gain vital skills to use in his career. How sad that the teacher has been acting Head of the English Department for nearly 3 years and acted as head again in another subject area for a number of years.
My fate already seems sealed: stagnated promotion, deliberate stagnation and indirect dysfunctionality from a system that ill equips its servicemen and women for their professional careers. This is a system which creates square pegs in round holes; a system which makes me angry regarding the archaic guidelines which Mr Cave mentioned in his missive in relation to heads needing to have a degree in the subject area; a system I believe where the planners should come together, meet with the stakeholders and go back to the drawing board; a system where the training college, university, Ministry of Education, teachers’ union and the Teaching Service Commission need to come together, talk and spend time with each other and agree on a way forward that benefits all. In any progressive education system given the need for cross-specialist curriculum reach, ways might have been recommended for teachers to ensure they are equipped in the area of their teacher training at the university, even well after they have completed a degree in another area. The university needs to educate its applicants better also.
In the end, persons who are both competent and experienced should merit their respective promotions. Finally, I believe heads of departments are curriculum based positions but they are equally administrative intensive positions too, and I strongly urge a timely review of the relevant guidelines. Persons also require administrative skills to head a department which is by and large a school within a school. Maybe Mr Cave should use his influence to review the hiring of so many young and just-out-of-school teachers in the system, many of whom cannot function effectively in front of a class and who cause the system to suffer further.
So I could not care less about the ‘eligibility criteria’ cited by Mr Cave. Many have the best degrees in sparkling subject areas and yet cannot function properly, and rather perform poorly. I would not blame the officials who approved my application in its early stages. They acted in their best judgment and to the best of their abilities. And I, like many of my other colleagues in education who sought promotion last year did the same. Many of us have been denied promotion for years and are deeply hurt by the outcome; many of us have become victims of an “education service” that Mr Cave himself criticized.
It’s sad too that Mr Lyte went on a tirade against me in his reply to me in KN about my promotion, but skimmed through or conveniently omitted the parts of my letter which bemoaned the denial of my Whitley Council emolument and also the delay in payment of the debunching money.
Yours faithfully,
Leon Suseran
