Today is World Teachers’ Day, which is being observed under the theme of “Valuing Teachers, Improving their Status,” but the Guyana Teachers Union (GTU) General Secretary Coretta McDonald is questioning whether local educators are indeed valued and if there is a real commitment to improving their livelihoods.
“We talk a lot about the children but we don’t focus on the people who are guiding the children, except in cases where we want to discipline them and bring them down. You can’t say that you value teachers and want to improve their status, yet you place no value on their concerns and do nothing to improve their status,” McDonald lamented during an interview with Stabroek News at the GTU’s headquarters.
Chief among the union’s concerns today is the length of time it is taking the Chief Justice to pronounce on the union’s challenge to the 2015 list of teacher promotions.
Last July, the preliminary promotion lists for public school teachers, prepared by the Teaching Service Commission (TSC) and the School Board Secretariat, were made public. Those promotions were, however, stalled when the GTU secured an injunction to prevent the two bodies from producing finalised lists. Based on the GTU’s application, former acting chief justice Ian Chang had ordered the TSC and the Minister of Education, respectively, to assess all applications for the 2015 promotions. These bodies were asked to show cause why the appointments should not be deemed unlawful.
The intention of the injunction, the union has previously stated, was to have the two bodies review the list. Since that time, the School Board Secretariat has agreed to do so. The TSC has refused to do so.
A meeting in October, 2015, between the TSC and GTU to resolve the issue via mediation failed after the TSC refused to review the list and promised instead to take on board the GTU’s recommendations in the 2016 promotion process. The matter returned to the courts and final arguments were delivered in April this year.
However, six months after final arguments were delivered, no decision has been made and teachers across the country have not been promoted for two years.
“We are waiting. I’m not sure what has taken her so long to make this decision all the arguments would’ve been made. The longer you take the more teachers are being affected. Teachers are retiring without getting where they want to be and there are other teachers stuck because they were eligible for promotions they received but now they can’t move so we have more actors and actresses,” McDonald said.
The union is also concerned about the manner in which the Ministry of Education is conducting negotiations for a new multi-year agreement on wages, salaries and non-wage benefits.
“We are comfortable that the President has recognized that the GTU negotiations are separate and apart from the public service negotiations,” McDonald said before adding that they are still disappointed with the memo which was circulated instructing that teachers be paid the same increase as public servants.
The union had accused the government of abandoning negotiations and instituting arbitrary increases after a circular, dated September 13, 2016 and addressed to the Regional Executive Officers and Regional Education Officers of regions 1 to 10 as well as the Principal Education Officer of Georgetown, directed that teachers be paid differentiated increases, ranging from 10% to 1%, on their salaries as of December 31, 2015. The circular was delivered to the union one week after it was sent and more than a month after the last meeting between the union and the ministry. No decision had been made at that meeting or prior in relation to salary increases.
Meanwhile, it is against this background that the 11 Education Departments received instructions to shelve all activities that had been planned to celebrate World Teacher’s Day.
On Monday, McDonald said, all regions were told that the Chief Education Officer did not approve the programmes. “I’m not sure what was the rationale,” she said, while noting that she has been unable to reach the acting Chief Education Officer Marcel Hutson to find out the reason for this decision.
Stabroek News was also unable to source a comment from Hutson. When contacted via telephone, he said that he was unable to speak as he was at a function.
