TWO NEW ideas have recently emerged in the education debate. The first is that perhaps as many as 50 per cent of the unregulated community basic schools, while maintaining their identities as early childhood education institutions, could be 'attached' to existing primary and all-age schools in the formal government system, especially in rural areas where physical infrastructure is under-utilised and there are a surplus of teachers.
This could be phased in over three years and such consolidation would be effective and cost-efficient in solving some of the existing deficiencies. It would ultimately make some 2,000 untrained community basic school teachers redundant but we hope that the suggestion will be evaluated on its own merit without provoking a political reaction that employment is more important than quality education.
The second suggestion is a two-pronged approach to teacher training put forward by Dr. Ralph Thompson in his recent Buxton-Thompson Memorial Lecture. Within the legal framework of teachers having to be licensed, Dr. Thompson suggests that a two-year apprenticeship programme after graduation from a teachers training college should be a licensing requirement. This would allow the Ministry of Education to assign teachers-in-training to where they are needed most, many into the Community Basic School system.
The other approach suggested by Dr. Thompson is that existing untrained teachers in the private sector Community schools should be 'grand-fathered' or 'grand-mothered' to continue teaching if they enrol full time in a teacher training college, working towards their diplomas. Such teachers would be issued temporary licences, subject to revocation if they do not graduate. Under this scheme, a substantial number of untrained teachers could be upgraded over three years.
Based on their present pay which is little more than the wages of a domestic helper, such untrained teachers could not afford to pay tuition at teacher training colleges. Dr. Thompson estimates that it would cost about $150,000 per teacher per year for three years to gain a teaching diploma and he thinks this cost should be bourne substantially by Government. Dr. Claud Packer of the Mico Teachers' College has endorsed these suggestions in principle and this certainly lends them credibility.
There seems to be consensus that early childhood education must be improved if the remaining sectors in the education chain up to CXC are to perform satisfactorily. A four-week child minding course at the HEART Trust is simply not good enough to accomplish this. All teachers in the early childhood system dealing with children between the ages of two and seven need to be diploma graduates. We think the new suggestions will go a far way to making this a reality.
THE OPINIONS ON THIS PAGE, EXCEPT FOR THE ABOVE, DO NOT NECESSARILY REFLECT THE VIEWS OF THE GLEANER.
