LEGISLATORS on Wednesday jousted over which entity to be established under the Jamaica Teaching Council (JTC) Bill will have the final say on disciplinary matters pertaining to teachers.

According to the proposed JTC Bill, the council will regulate the practice and professional conduct of teachers, while the body’s subcommittee – the professional practice and conduct committee (PPCC) – will be responsible for disciplinary matters relating to teachers.

Government member Kavan Gayle raised the matter about 20 minutes into Wednesday’s meeting of the joint select committee reviewing the Bill. Members then spent the remainder of the session vigorously deliberating on which entity ought to make the final decision on disciplinary matters.

Gayle said he realised, based on the last meeting of the committee, that it was apparent that there was some confusion about the role and functions of the two entities.

“The substantive argument was around who was actually making the decision and what is the role of the decision-maker? In my understanding of how the Bill has been framed and consistently going through, we had made a decision that the PPCC, having gone through the adjudication or the hearing, would make a decision on the matter and submit that decision to the council and then the council would take the necessary action. So concerns would have been raised around who really makes the decision,” he said.

“I’m suggesting that in order to make the legislation as tidy as possible, if there is any ambiguity, in terms of the scope and functions of the two committees, we are to as a committee distill it and be clear on the understanding and objectives of the intention,” he said.

At Wednesday’s meeting, Assistant Attorney General Jeffrey Foreman, who had previously raised the issue at the last committee meeting, said it was his understanding the PPCC was the entity that made the decision in relation to disciplinary matters that came before the council.

“What I hear coming from the committee is a slightly different policy intention, which would involve the council proper in assessing the decision of the PPCC and then making its own determination based on the report that’s prepared by the PPCC. If that’s the policy intention there might need to be some tweaks in that,” he said.

Foreman explained that the Bill had been reformulated over time to place the decision-making in relation to disciplinary matters in the hands of the PPCC and to have those decisions then being appealed to the Appeals Tribunal if the party is dissatisfied with the results of the disciplinary process.

Opposition Senator Lambert Brown questioned if the intent is to remove the council from the disciplinary issues so it goes from the PPCC to the Appeals Tribunal, bypassing the council.

“How does that fit into the scheme of the legislation which really has the council at the centre of it and the PPCC is but a subcommittee of the council? What is the role of the council? Does it have a role? Once a reference is made to the PPCC, does the council lay dormant for the rest of the process? That’s not the direction we wanted to go when we established the council as this overarching power,” he said.

In response to this query, Gayle pointed out that the council has other responsibilities and is “not going to be asleep. What we thought in applying the provision was to remove the council from the activity of hearing the complaints and creating another organ – the PPCC – to be the one adjudicating on disciplinary matters to make a decision based on the outcome as laid out, and then relaying the decision to the council once again to act on disciplinary matters or complaints.”

Committee Chair and Minister of Education and Youth Fayval Williams said she would not want the decisions on disciplinary matters to only be recommendations from the PPCC “that then goes to the 30-odd member board to be decided on. That’s not what we want”.

Responding to this comment, Brown said he believes the council should be the superior authority for teachers and is of the view that it ought to be the council that takes the final decision in disciplinary matters.

“I am for the council being the decision-maker, but we need to find a route that gets us there without doing the damage that you fear, Minister, which is that 30-odd people might overturn what a specialised committee has looked at,” he said.

At the end of the deliberations Government member Tova Hamilton suggested a deferral as the committee still could not decide who the decision-making body should be. The chair then referred the matter to the technical team for review.