THE joint select committee reviewing the proposed Jamaica Teaching Council (JTC) Bill on Thursday was at an impasse as they sought to determine whether or not the law should stipulate that people who train teachers need to be educators themselves.

Government member Ransford Braham raised concern with this “onerous” provision, as the committee went through the draft report on their deliberations to be presented to Parliament.

“I’m wondering…all the persons who are teaching in teacher training institutions have to be qualified teachers? Every deggeh deggeh one? Is that reasonable? That sounds to me [like if] I’m doing my BSc [Bachelor of Science] [degree] in education, the persons who teach in that programme all have to be qualified teachers. Not a specific set of people, but everybody. Is that practical?” he queried.

Chief executive officer of the JTC Dr Winsome Gordon responded to say that the council’s concern is to ensure that the process of getting authorisation to teach is not cumbersome.

“That’s important. But if the institution is training teachers, and somebody is going to be brought into that institution to train teachers, then there should be some level of satisfaction that this person is sufficiently exposed and qualified to train teachers,” she said.

She noted, however, that, for example, the education system is short of physics teachers, and there might be a graduate in physics who can contribute to the professional development of a teacher in a teacher’s college.

“Nonetheless, the college would have to guarantee that the professional aspect of the teaching of physics is taken care of because the person who is coming in to teach physics can teach the content, but not the professional dimension. So the Bill gives opportunity for that person to be authorised to teach and to be authorised to teach whether it’s in a school or the teachers’ college. But at the same time, we have to ensure that where that happens then the teacher’s college has the responsibility to provide the professional dimension of that person’s teaching,” she said.

But Braham argued that while he appreciates that a certain number of the persons in the training institution need to know how to teach and to teach people how to teach, “there are going to be other things that the teacher learns as a part of his or her degree that you don’t need to have any qualification for teaching for them to learn about them.”

Using a hypothetical scenario, Braham argued that he does not see the logic why the entire 500 people working at Graham’s Teachers College should all be authorised to teach or be qualified teachers.

“Do you need every lecturer, assistant lecturer, part-time lecturer ,tutor, to come in that you have to apply and sit down and wait for the authorisation that could take six months? I think we must be realistic,” he said.

“They are in fact training teachers, yes, and they are training adults. I do accept that. You must have the leadership and people in charge in certain departments have certain qualifications. But I’m saying that you ought not to need every other person in a tertiary institution, teaching, lecturing and that they have to get a designation from the council whether as an authorised person or a qualified teacher, “ he said, noting that it is unnecessary work for the council and is also adding to the bureaucracy.

The committee could not decide on this clause in the proposed Bill, so committee Chairman Fayval Williams suggested that there needs to be more extensive discussions on the issue.

“So we’re going to have to do some further deliberation around this, maybe even speak with our teacher education institutions,” she said.