The two-year suspension of face-to-face classes forced by the novel coronavirus pandemic has fuelled an increased demand for shadow teachers from both private and public schools. But the education ministry, according to Jamaica Independent Schools’ Association (JISA) President Dr Andre Dyer, is having difficulty meeting the requests.

Shadow teachers provide one-on-one support in classrooms to children and adolescents with special needs to help in the development of their academic, social, and behavioural skills.

Those teachers are provided through the ministry’s Special Education Unit.

“The unit is open to all the schools in Jamaica because we do have private schools that utilise them, but the demand is very great, so sometimes you are waiting for six to 12 months before you are assigned a shadow, it’s very, very great,” Dyer told the Jamaica Observer in a recent interview.

In the interim, he said, parents have been left footing some heavy costs, in some instances, to secure shadow teachers on their own.

“To my knowledge, it ranges between $30,000 and $90,000 per month; it depends on the qualifications of the shadow. But you could pay as low as $15,000 if the school is going to pay some,” Dr Dyer said.

He also pointed out that shadow teachers “come in different categories”, meaning some were required not just to assist the child at school but at home as well.

“So it depends on what you hire them for,” he stated.

The Special Education Unit provides technical support that encompasses education for students aged three to 21 years with various special needs, including students who are deaf or are afflicted with other hearing impairments; students who are blind or have visual impairment; students with learning disabilities, intellectual disability, emotional and behavioural disorders, and autism; and students who are gifted and talented.

Up to Friday, the Sunday Observer had not received from the Ministry of Education an indication of the number of requests from schools for shadow teachers.

Dr Dyer said the change in the curriculum from the Grade Six Achievement Test (GSAT) to Primary Exit Profile (PEP) has also fed the demand from children at the elementary level.

“They were learning in one technique and then the whole requirement changes on you; another format of learning has never been posed to the child. So let’s say a visual learner, a tactile learner, you ask them to explain their answer instead of writing — they can’t do it — but if I push a pencil and paper to that child they will write for days. But remember, the way exams are set it doesn’t matter what you know, it’s what you can prove. So all of those things come into play,” Dr Dyer pointed out.

“Back in the day when we were doing GSAT you could have a shadow assigned to three, four kids, but now with PEP, where it’s open-ended answers, you can pose one question but there are four different answers. It’s very difficult for an individual to track four, five kids on that type of curriculum,” he said.

“So what you find is one-to-one pairing in most cases. So there is a need for more shadows in the industry, whether private or public schools. A class teacher with 20 or more students in a class doesn’t have the time to do that little fine-tuning with that one child. So it’s not that the child is not capable, it’s just that the child cannot put the responses how it’s required to pass,” the JISA head said.

Dr Dyer, who is the principal at Obistan Kinder Preparatory School on Washington Boulevard in the Corporate Area, said his school is also on the waiting list for shadow teachers.

“In my school we have been trying to get two shadows for September, but if those two children don’t get a shadow I will have to make the harsh decision to either repeat them or try to work with them. I already know as an educator that if I push them through I am setting them up for failure because I know what is to come and I know what they can manage,” he told the Observer.

In the meantime, he explained why some parents, even after forking out significant sums for school fees, are still being asked to foot the cost for shadow teachers.

“It comes down to the school, because some schools do have a resource room and a special needs teacher on payroll in their budget. A school that does not have that teacher on payroll, what they are asking you to do is either to subsidise or pay for the teacher that would be helping your child,” Dr Dyer explained.

“Some schools cannot afford it because they may be heavily subsidised by their church, which is already stressed after COVID, and so, if the school needs three shadows and they are looking at the church and the church is saying we are already stressed, then their only option is to say to the parent, ‘We can’t afford to subsidise it for you,’ ” he added.

He noted that while some schools might have resource room teachers, there is a cap on the number of students assigned to one teacher.

“So, if there are, for example, more than four, five students in need they will need to bring in an extra. So you can’t look at it in a blanket way, you have to look at the institution itself,” he stated.