Petrina Francis, Staff Reporter
Henry-wilson
Ocho Rios, St. Ann:
Government is to begin the mandatory registration of teachers next month, ahead of the licensing of teaching professionals as recommended by a task force that was charged with coming up with proposals to lift the standard of education in Jamaica.
"Eventually, we will move into licensing," the Education Minister, Maxine Henry-Wilson, told The Gleaner yesterday.
The registration of teachers is, in fact, a requirement of the Education Code, but
was never implemented.
The Teachers' Services Commission (TSC) will develop a registry with information such as the qualification and employment history of teachers.
The proposal has won the endorsement of the Jamaica Teachers' Association (JTA) which ended its 42nd annual conference in Ocho Rios yesterday, at which Education Ministry officials outlined the programme.
Streamlining
"The Ministry of Education needs to do their streamlining to ensure that they have a record of our teachers," Hopeton Henry, the organisation's new president, told The Gleaner. "We will ensure that the criteria that are set out are in the interest of the teachers."
There are more than 22,000 state-paid teachers in Jamaica and hundreds of others employed to
private institutions, but there is no central source of information
about them. Teachers are mostly employed by individual school boards.
Enhance
professionalism
In an address to the teachers' union, Henry-Wilson argued that the registration and subsequent licensing of teachers would enhance professionalism.
"This is very important for you as professionals," Henry-Wilson said. "If you have others in the profession who are not registered, then they cannot represent the profession."
Dorothy Raymond,
a member of the TSC, explained that the Education Code spoke, not only of the establishment of a register, but of the offences for which teachers can be struck off.
"If you have none (a teachers' register) you can't be struck off," she said.
On the further issue of licensing, Henry-Wilson said that applicable criteria would be developed. "We are looking on various models," she said.
Criteria for a teacher's licence, she suggested, could including specific training, minimum experience in the profession and continuing education
