Dear Editor,

Please allow me space to join the peremptory call of Dr Asburn Pinnock, president of The Mico University College, imploring the Government to train teachers for export.

The call is being made due to the massive exodus of Jamaican teachers to principally the United States of America and the United Kingdom, where more lucrative opportunities are being offered.

Their migration has left a dearth of specialist teachers in the Jamaican classroom and has placed the sector in a precarious position. Since teacher training takes a minimum of three years, replacing these teachers, who are said to number in excess of 400, for the current academic year constitutes a mammoth challenge for the Government. Given that this attrition is a recurrent phenomenon, the Government must act expeditiously to arrest the problem to save the collapse of the education sector.

I wish to proffer the following recommendations to the Government to arrest the current problem and create a new paradigm for the success of the teaching profession.

• Immediately provide the Jamaica Teachers’ Association (JTA) with a meaningful employment package for its members, with a view to elevating the teaching profession to one that’s attractive to teachers by improving its salary scale.

• Reinvest in the teaching profession by training more teachers, some of whom can be for export. It’s well known that Jamaica now enjoys a very lucrative and vibrant remittance sector and so training teachers for export must be adopted as an economic imperative.

• Immediately establish partnerships with the JTA and importers of these educators to formalise teacher training for export and negotiate contractual terms from which the country can benefit directly.

These strategies, if adopted, will immediately transform the teaching profession and elevate it to the realm of a significant contributor to the foreign exchange market.

Dr JD Wood

jafnam@yahoo.com