GOVERNMENT-funded teachers’ colleges have officially registered to Parliament their stiff objection to the proposed level of power the Jamaica Teaching Council (JTC) will have to oversee and monitor the profession.

“We must be careful we don’t dumb down the profession, instead of professionalising the profession. We are bright enough to be able to monitor ourselves. We don’t need ministers to come with certain powers to criminalise teachers,” the tough-talking dean of the Teachers’ Colleges of Jamaica (TCJ) Dr Garth Anderson cautioned last week at a sitting of the Fayval Williams-chaired joint select committee reviewing the JTC Bill.

He reiterated that the colleges are not opposed to the intent of the Bill — which is to set standards and guide the profession — but teachers are resistant because there should be effective systems in place to ensure the education ministry and administrators monitor teachers in the system. However, it is felt that the JTC Bill is simply out to criminalise teachers.

“We can get people to comply without being penal,” Dr Anderson, who is also president of the Caribbean region of teachers said, suggesting that there is in fact regional push-back to this level of regulation of the profession.

Furthermore, he told the committee, teachers are concerned about the extent of Government’s interest in regulating the profession.

“Part of the challenge is that we question why is it the Government would have such a deliberate interest in monitoring what happens in the teaching profession, when that is not the same case for lawyers, doctors, or nurses. Why is it teachers would not be given their opportunity to monitor their profession and to set their own standards and to make professional judgement on their colleagues as happens with other entities,” Anderson argued.

He said the TCJ is also concerned about the power of the education minister, excessive penalties for people who are found to be practising without being registered, and the number of people outside of the teaching profession who would sit on the council.

“The composition of the council itself is still of concern [as] clearly there is no way a teacher could make his or her way to the hospital and pretend to be a doctor or a nurse, but we see all kinds of persons possibly outnumbering the teachers who sit on the council, to make a professional judgement,” Anderson argued.

He also questioned whether the JTC will lean solely on funds from fees and penalties, considering that teachers are not remunerated at adequate levels, and this could impose an extra financial burden on them.

The colleges are asking that the proposed authority of the JTC to determine the categories of people who are eligible to be granted authorisation to teach be removed. The teacher training institutions say the council should issue authorisations based on the unique circumstance of each applicant, “rather than on limited, preconceived categories”.

“We believe that the council would not have the capacity and it would not be prudent for the council to, beforehand, determine persons who are eligible, in a comprehensive way, list all the categories, all the possible permutation of persons who would be authorised to teach,” legal counsel Julian Mowatt explained to the committee.

She noted that people who do not meet the matriculation requirement to be licensed, but have the requisite skill and competence, would be locked out of the teaching system if a restricted category is predetermined by the JTC.

The colleges are also against the JTC regulating teaching practice.

“The Teachers’ Colleges of Jamaica has a great concern with this provision because as it stands now, the regulation of the practice of teaching wouldn’t seem feasible that the council would have the sheer manpower [and] the skill to regulate the practice of teaching throughout the education system at all levels. We also believe that that function is being ably fulfilled now by other stakeholders in the education sector,” the attorney said.

The TCJ is also gunning for the removal of the section from the Bill that authorises the council to take on the role of making and setting professional appraisals for teachers.

“It is quite unusual; we haven’t seen it in any other legislation where a regulator is in the position of performing an appraisal function, and that’s what we interpret this to be,” Mowatt pointed out.

She said the appraisals are usually an intimate process between employer and employee, and it would be difficult to relegate that function and be effectively carried out by a regulator who is far removed from the daily teaching process.

The TCJ is a consortium of eight Government-funded teachers’ colleges across the island, serving approximately 320 lecturers and offering a four-year bachelor’s degree programme to about 3,000 teachers in training annually.