Opposition spokesperson for finance and the public service Julian Robinson says shadow teachers for special needs children are leaving the education system because of low salaries.

“There are a number of complaints about shadows who are resigning from the job because of the very low remuneration provided to them. Shadows are specialised trained teachers; they are in demand and there are many who are just leaving. Those are the ones that would have been paid by the Government,” Robinson said.

Robinson was speaking in Parliament Tuesday after Education and Youth Minister Fayval Williams made a statement on several aspects of the education sector.

The Opposition member said he was aware resources are tight but wanted to know if the education ministry could look at areas where improvements could be made for these specialised teachers.

In response to Robinson’s query, the education minister said that there are approximately 500 shadows in the system and that improved compensation is an area the ministry was looking at.

“As you know, the Government has been going through a relook of everything with regards to compensation and so on, and so the Ministry of Education continues to do our part too to look at how we can rebalance the scales as well,” she said.

Increased need for shadow teachers for both private and public schools was previously highlighted with the two-year suspension of face-to-face classes due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

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.

These teachers are provided through the ministry’s Special Education Unit which gives 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.

In a Jamaica Observer interview in 2022, Jamaica Independent Schools’ Association (JISA) President Dr Andre Dyer revealed that the unit was having difficulty meeting the requests for shadows.

“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,” Dyer said.

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.

In the meantime, Robinson has called on the Government to provide greater support for parents of children with special needs in terms of assessment and placement.

“There’s a real deficit in the education system in assessing children who have special needs, many of the kids who we say ‘dunce, nah learn’, they have challenges and they’re not either recommended for assessment or if they are recommended the cost of doing an assessment is prohibitive and secondly, there are very few professionals who can do assessments. So if you go privately you have a wait list of up to a year.

“We know resources are tight but there is a huge deficit in terms of parents who have those special needs children who need to place them in educational institutions outside of the normal schools and they simply don’t have the resources to place them in a private institution. The private institutions are prohibitively expensive; those fees are tertiar- level type fees. Many of the children get left behind because the parents can’t afford it,” Robinson said.

In response, Williams acknowledged that the ministry needs to do more to ensure that special needs students are provided for adequately.

She noted, however, that the ministry has partnerships with 17 private institutions that include prep schools in offering special needs support.

“Twenty of our public schools are special education institutions. We have assessment centres at Sam Sharp, Mico, and Church [Teachers’ College] and CASE [College of Agriculture, Science and Education] to come online,” she said.

Williams noted as well that special needs assessors have degrees in education psychology, clinical psychology; they are diagnosticians and the ministry has a regional team to support special needs assessment and placement of students.