EDUCATION Minister Fayval Williams has moved to allay fears of a shortage of teachers in the classrooms come September the start of the new school year.

Addressing a post-Cabinet media briefing at Jamaica House on Wednesday, Williams said the number of teachers who have resigned so far this year is much lower than last year, while hundreds of teachers have completed their training and are now ready to join the workforce.

Williams was responding to reports that several schools have been placing advertisements for teachers in recent weeks.

Days ago a Sunday Observer probe revealed that 227 teaching positions had been advertised by 23 schools last week.

In providing clarity on the ads, president of the Jamaica Association of Principals of Secondary Schools (JAPSS) Linvern Wright told the Observer that the principals were being proactive by attempting to fill vacancies at their institutions.

“Principals are concerned about the fact that teachers are expressing intents to go. It is not something in which we have certain numbers of who will leave, but by a version of our experiences we know that when we start hearing of teachers going we have to try preparing for September,” said Wright.

He pointed out that, while he could not say if more teachers were quitting the classrooms this year, the big problem was the quality of teachers who are leaving.

“If every year you have to replace your teachers with new persons, your efforts to ensure that you train people to become better at what they do has to be far more consuming and deliberate, because each set of new persons has to be dealing with the children, who are getting more difficult,” added Wright.

But addressing the post-Cabinet media briefing, Williams argued that the turnover of teachers was neither new nor different.

“Like any other sector of workers in the economy, it is to be expected that on an annual basis we will see movement in and out of the education sector,” said Williams.

“In any sector in Jamaica there is a per cent of persons who make personal decisions to go into other fields, to migrate, to retire, to go into entrepreneurial endeavours, and so on. And so the education sector is no different,” added Williams.

She noted the local teaching sector faces a further disadvantage as annually a number of teachers go off on vacation leave of between four and eight months that they would have earned.

“Last year, at about this same time, 1,664 teachers went off on either four months or eight months [vacation] or retired. This represents about seven per cent of the cadre of teachers — about 25,000 across the education system. This year approximately 2,300 teachers have earned four months or eight months leave or retirement,” added Williams.

“In the advertisements that we are seeing in the local newspapers for teachers, many of the ads are for teachers to fill [spaces opened up by those going on] four months or eight months vacation.”

She said, of the ads she has seen recently, there have been indications that many of these are not for permanent posts.

“Twenty per cent of the ads indicated clear vacancies, 34 of the positions were for teachers to four months or eight months — temporary positions or contract positions — and there were 46 per cent of jobs advertised that did not indicate whether the jobs were temporary or clear vacancy,” said Williams as she reported her findings from an analysis of the advertisements placed in the newspapers over the past two weeks.

The education minister charged that in videos posted on social media about the advertisements for teachers some of the ads were repeated in the same video in what she argued was an attempt to exaggerate the issue.

She said the ministry’s figures show that there has been a 43 per cent decline in the number of resignations by teachers between January and June this year when compared to the same period last year.

“Our internal figures show 506 resignations [last year] versus 287 [this year]. These are the numbers, and as I did last year, I will do again this year. I will report to Jamaicans as we get new numbers so we can keep the country abreast with what is happening,” added Williams.

She noted that last year a number of strategies were rolled out for schools to ensure that they were not short of teachers and these worked.

The strategies included allowing school boards to recruit teachers from early, to engage some teachers who were on their approved vacation leave and paying them for the period, and allowing schools to engage part-time teachers or those who had retired up to January 2018.

She pointed out that more than 1,000 teachers would be coming out of teachers’ colleges this year, including 28 specialist business studies teachers, 32 specialist computer studies and information technology teachers, 60 English literature and literacy specialists, and 31 social studies specialists.

In the meantime, minister with responsibility for information Robert Morgan, in supporting Williams, said the facts do not support claims of a looming crisis in the shortage of teachers.

“Every year there is a story in the public that there is a teacher shortage, but every year there are more teacher training graduates than the amount of teachers who are leaving the classrooms, and we are running the risk…of having a lot of teacher unemployed because there is not enough space in the education system to employ them,” said Morgan.

He argued that the conversation should be not about how many teachers are migrating from the classrooms but how the country will find space to employ those leaving teachers’ colleges.