GRANVILLE, St James — More than 400 public school teachers have resigned from the education sector within the past 11 days leading up to this week’s start of the new school term, and already the Opposition People’s National Party (PNP) spokesman on education Damion Crawford has predicted that there will be a similar fallout before the end of the month.

“I am predicting that another 300 will leave in the next 20 days because the teachers don’t resign from the ministry — the teachers resigned from the school. There is a natural time gap between when the school receives and the ministry is advised,” stated Crawford, who noted that this is not a rocket science scenario.

Crawford was addressing a PNP West Central constituency conference at Granville Primary School on Saturday.

Statistician and The University of the West Indies lecturer Dr Andre Haughton is the party’s standard-bearer for the constituency.

Last Wednesday, Education and Youth Minister Fayval Williams told a post-Cabinet press briefing that the number of teachers leaving the system jumped from 427 on August 18 to 854 on August 29.

Williams noted that the number of resignations represents a 44 per cent decline in comparison to the 1,538 teachers who resigned during the same period last year.

However, Crawford has no confidence in the minister’s assessment of the impact on the sector.

“She did the same thing last year when the highest number of resignations happened in the country’s history,” stated Crawford.

Even though Williams stated last week that several vacant positions from last year were filled, Crawford argued that there is no way a school can be better off if it lost a certain number of teachers last year, who were not replaced, and yet another set were lost this year.

“The minister reports that it is better now because there is a reduction in the numbers this year from last year, when last year was massive. And we run behind that [reasoning] not realising that at the secondary level, if one [teacher] is absent, it affects 160 students,” stated Crawford who explained his claim using the analogy of a mathematics teacher having to teach four classes of 40 students each.

Crawford said all except the employers of public school teachers have admitted to a crisis at hand.

“You have a set of people in this country that don’t know when there is a crisis — and I don’t know why you have to debate if there is a crisis because the Jamaica Teachers’ Association said there is a crisis. The principals said there is a crisis. The parents said there is a crisis. The children said there is a crisis. The Opposition said there is a crisis. The only group that doesn’t see it is the Government — and somehow we all should have said that we fool and them smart,” stated Crawford.