Minister of Education Ronald Thwaites says there will have to be a revision and reactivation of protocol regulating the recruitment of Jamaican teachers by overseas recruiters.

This, as the education ministry revealed last week that 494 maths and science teachers left the public education sector last year alone to pursue overseas employment.

“So often schools do not know that the teacher is leaving until the teacher has left, which is our greatest difficulty,” Thwaites said during a press conference at HEART Trust/NTA corporate offices in St Andrew, last Friday.

The minister said that with the current framework which allows for oversees recruiters — who are primarily from the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada — to come to Jamaica to privately recruit teachers the ministry was blindsided when many teachers, without officially resigning, simply did not turn up for work.

“ Now, we are planning to approach the taking companies, and work out protocol even though on a government to government basis we know when an approach is being made and we know that there can be some kind of insurance because if they are taking our teachers, whom we have trained, then certainly there should be some level of reciprocity in helping to train our teachers for the local market and certainly for the foreign market,” Thwaites explained.

One reason given for the high level of departure from the classroom is the attractive employment opportunities overseas and the poor remuneration that teachers receive here, a report released by the education ministry stated.

Thwaites said the loss of mathematics and science teachers has rocked the island’s education system.

“We lost a great number of good math and science teachers and it has been a blow to the education system. This has happened for a number of reasons but an even greater issue at hand is the fact that we risk losing may more,” Thwaites said.

Thwaites said the ministry will be pulling out all stops to ensure that positive trends that have been recorded in mathematics over the past three years is not greatly affected in light of this revelation.

However, while they work to iron out this wrinkle, Thwaites said that there are also other ongoing efforts organised by his ministry which will be in motion by September.

“We are taking nothing off the table and we will have to put a number of things in place (and) one that we have looked at is incentivising mathematics and science teachers and it may very well be that we may have to offer contracts of service to people with particular expertise-probably they are people who have already retired or those who are not in the education system ­ because we need people who can come and offer the strengths in these areas,” the minister proffered.

Among the other proposals listed by Thwaites to address the drain on the education system is offering scholarships to people who have an interest in pursuing mathematics and the sciences starting September, as well as recruiting exceptional mathematics and science students to pursue education degrees in the disciplines under the condition that they submit to a bonding period of five years.

The minister acknowledged that this thrust to focus on mathematics and sciences ­ is linked to the global demands for people who specialise in STEAM areas (science, technology. engineering, arts and mathematics).

He said the disappointing number of students registering for subjects in the sciences as well as the reduction in science passes in the 2015 Caribbean Examination Council exams was enough evidence that the issue needs to be addressed urgently.

Thwaites also briefed journalists on the current state of the education ministry, as well as projected plans for the 2016/2017 academic year.