Director of Education Cecil Thompson said some of the factors that contribute to the situation are teachers following through on in-service awards, those who retire and those who for whatever reason find it necessary to submit their resignation letters after the August payday.
“In cases like these, we cannot respond overnightï¾…Teachers do not grow on trees,” Mr. Thompson said.
“But we have an obligation to ensure that at the end of the day students are provided with teachers, and so while all [public] schools will be opened [on Monday] they will never be fully staffed. The Bahamas was never self sufficient in the production of teachers, but it is a goal we are striving towards.”
Bahamas Union of Teachers President Ida Poitier-Turnquest has offered her own view as to why some teachers abruptly resign in August.
She said if those teachers were to do so earlier they would risk losing the last week of their paycheck in August.
“Teachers have to continually qualify themselves at their own expense. Therefore, if they have a small salary it is frustrating and they will not stay,” Mrs. Poitier-Turnquest said.
“And so it really takes those persons who are dedicated to remain in the profession.”
Mr. Thompson was unable to say definitively how many teachers are needed, but he explained that the problem exists only in certain pockets of the system, mainly at the high school level.
“The country cannot afford to have any student out of school,” he said. “We would be sowing seeds of our own destruction.”
The search for additional competent teachers continues to take education officials abroad.
This past year, the Ministry of Education recruited Spanish teachers from Mexico and Special Education teachers from Cuba.
Officials say that over the years, the ministry has put certain incentives in place to keep teachers in the field while attracting young Bahamians to the profession.
One of the ways this is done is through the Teacher Cadet programme, which provides a stipend for students interested in teaching.
“We mentor those persons during their high school years, so that they get a deep understanding and appreciation of teaching,” Education Minister Alfred Sears recently noted.
“We have also offered over 400 scholarships to students in the School of Education (at the College of the Bahamas). We provide guaranteed loans for students to pursue tertiary education in this field to institutions other than COB.”
The Ministry of Education is also expected to start a 24-hour broadcast on education sometime this year aptly called the Learning Channel.
The focus is to inform the public of the opportunities in the teaching profession.
In the case of those already in the field, full and partial in-service awards are provided up to the PhD level.
The BUT president believes another good incentive would be to make the teaching profession “more people friendly.”
“We have teachers who have worked an entire year, who are still being paid on a voucher system,” she said.
“Therefore, when everyone gets paid at the end of the month, they have to wait an additional two weeks before they are paid, and so if they have loans, their bank payments are late.”
By: Macushla N. Pinder, The Bahama Journal
