BOTH Education Minister Andrew Holness and the newly elected president of the Jamaica Teachers' Association (JTA), Nadine Molloy, are predicting a smooth start to the academic year today.

"Yes, we are ready for the school year," Minister Holness said on Friday. "There are perennial problems and there are local problems which will always occur, but from the ministry's perspective, I think we have provided all the resources that are expected of us to the schools."

Holness told the Observer that while there are some minor problems, these are not enough to prevent a smooth opening.

"We'll have some infrastructure problems which are always there," he said. "You will have problems to do with lack of water, some schools will have a shortage of desks and chairs, but not such that they couldn't re-open. There may be shortages of workbooks and textbooks within the first week or so, but those will be resolved as we go along. But there should be no major incident that could cause a disruption of schools."

While commending the ministry for the efforts made to ensure a smooth opening, Molloy agreed that no problems existed that could disrupt schools, adding that the relationship between the JTA and the ministry has improved greatly.

"It seems that we will be having a relatively smooth start this year," she said in an interview two weeks ago. "As far as I know, the grants are in the schools. We have had no complaints of grants not being paid out. The reports we are getting so far are that we are going to have a smoother start this year. And I must commend the ministry where they are to be commended. And we believe that they have been really trying to respond to our constructive criticisms of the problems that we had at the start of the school year last year."

However, the grey area that could pose a problem, if not addressed immediately, she added, is that of acting teachers not being paid.

"The problem that we are concerned about is the replacement teachers for those who have gone on leave," the president said, explaining that 10 per cent of teachers are allowed to go on leave at any given time.

"We have not had the responses yet from the ministry and we don't want that to be a problem, where we cannot staff the schools at the level at which we need to staff them," she said. "But though I have not heard anything definitive, I understand that the matter is being dealt with."

Despite this, she explained that things are looking better than they did this time last year.

"Things have got better, but we do not yet know if it will be the best. But a lot of things are better, including communication with the ministry," she added. "We haven't had any complaints yet except the locum tenens issue, we know they are looking at how they (Ministry of Education) can spend less -- we understand that -- but at the same time we believe that the schools should be staffed at the same level it was staffed before."