THE TASK Force on Education, in accepting that Jamaican teachers urgently need upgrading to professional status if the system within which they work is to function properly, has recommended that all teachers should have a Bachelor's degree in education. They have also recommended that if the undergraduate degree is in subject areas other than education, it must be reinforced by a diploma in teacher education.These proposals should be implemented in the shortest possible time if some of the prevailing problems affecting the system are to be addressed.
The present situation is an unsatisfactory mismatch in which 63 per cent of teachers have only a diploma whilst 13 per cent have university degrees but no teaching diploma. Overall, a scant 20 per cent of teachers in the public system are graduate trained teachers. Jamaica is now paying the price of settling for mediocrity, only four CXC subjects being necessary to enter a teacher training college.
Although the selection process is now more rigorous, the fact is that many of those attending teacher training colleges, see this as a means of finding some kind of employment rather than becoming members of a proud profession.
Many graduates of teacher training colleges do not demonstrate fluency in standard English, a deficiency which contaminates the total education cycle. Many diploma graduates lack the personality and psychological orientation necessary to deal with young children, especially in the early childhood segment of the education cycle.
In most societies, being able to qualify to be licensed by the State is what constitutes evidence of professional status. The task force is right to conclude that for there to be transparency and accountability in a reformed education system, teachers must be licensed to practise their profession. True professionals would then become so jealous of their reputation as a group that they would use peer pressure to remove from the system any under-performers or time servers who are bringing it into disrepute. Unfortunately, this is not now the case in Jamaica, good performers covering up for the slothful and disinterested, sometimes in a misguided notion of worker loyalty.
Unless there is a sea change in the attitude and motivation of teachers, the recommendation of the task force will face turbulent passage to implementation and may well founder.
