OCHO RIOS, St Ann – A study has revealed that untrained teachers and teachers trained to teach at the primary level are still being used at the secondary level, despite continuing poor performance of Jamaican students in CXC examinations in mathematics, English and science.

The study, which was conducted by one of the Ministry of Education’s regional offices during the 2004/2005 academic year, said teachers were being rendered incompetent because of improper deployment as they were being assigned to teach subject areas in which they were not trained.

The study, conducted in several rural secondary schools, cited a case where the science department at a particular school was staffed with nine teachers, but only one had a college major in science.

Of the others, one majored in physical education, one in social studies, while five majored in agriculture.

In the mathematics department at another secondary school, of the seven teachers only one was college trained and majored in mathematics. Three were trained for the primary level, one trained in agriculture and one had a major in science at the university level.

At a third school, of 15 teachers in the English department, four were untrained and none of the others had a major in English.

Principal of the Shortwood Teachers’ College Elaine Foster-Allen made the announcement about the study at a conference on education hosted by the Jamaica Teachers’ Association (JTA) at the Sunset Jamaica Grande in Ocho Rios.

The conference was aimed at identifying threats to quality public education

“We often do not make the links between the effects of teachers’ underperformance and the causes of teachers’ underperformance,” Foster-Allen later told the Observer.

“There are many teachers who are wrongfully deployed, either they are not teaching in the content area for which they were trained or they are not teaching in the phase of education for which they were trained. and that must have an impact on the way which they teach,” said the Shortwood principal.

Foster-Allen said that although teachers have generic skills, knowledge of, and familiarity with subject contents was “really important.”

The report of the survey, made before scores of representatives of teachers’ unions from 25 countries across the Caribbean and North American, failed to ruffle JTA president Hopeton Henry, who, while admitting that the situation existed, said it was not a major problem.

“There are some teachers who are deployed outside of their areas of competencies and this definitely will affect the quality of the output,” Henry admitted.

But, he said: “Some primary school teachers may do an elective where they do all the subjects, but there is a particular one they concentrate on. So you find quite a number of primary school teachers who are teaching their elective course at the secondary level but they are not really trained secondary teachers. In those cases, you do not have such a serious problem.”

He said, however, that it has been emphasised during teacher training, at professional development courses and at teachers’ conferences, that persons should be deployed in their given area of training.

Henry said while he was unsure if the practice was widespread, it was an area that the JTA would have to pay more attention to.