Dear Editor,

At face value, the Jamaica Teaching Council (JTC) Bill sounds good, as it purports to improve the professional standard of the teaching practice, provide continuing training for educators, and regulate the industry. Who wouldn’t want this?

Several sectors view the Bill as a welcome change to finally hold teachers accountable to performance standards. Principal and parent groups weigh in on its impact in transforming the sector. It, indeed, seems to be resurrected from the dead with power, after its inertia for about two decades.

One’s refutation would seem so unjustified, as if you would want to operate without standards and quality control.

Not so for teachers. Teachers are not seeking an occasion to not be regulated. But the drafters of this Bill have created a perfect way for teachers to be victimised, targeted, abused, and rejected. It appears that the Education Regulations, 1980, is too cordial and in the teachers’ interests that an iron fist must be raised above it to finally restrain and chastise teachers.

As a trained professional, I raise objection to this Bill on three counts: It is too deeply punitive; the overarching power of the JTC; and the potential for the weaponisation against teachers by principals and school boards.

The perfectness of the Education Regulations guarantees security of tenure and the fair treatment of teachers, which we would love to preserve.

The Bill presents as a schoolmaster. Suffice it to say, our national heroes have fought and prevailed against that system that wanted to tie our hands behind us and yoke us into a helpless state. With the emergence of this Bill, it appears that it wants to resurface, for the deadly wound has been healed.

Alas! This JTC Bill will create a system that will shoot itself in the foot. Such an enactment is not ideal for our peculiar education system, wherein we struggle to fill teaching vacancies, grapple with high levels of illiteracy, poor infrastructure, and can barely offer a liveable compensation package to educators. With this, whom will we attract to the classroom?

With urgency, the teachers beseech the drafters to go back to the table and erase what could be a time bomb for the collapse of the education system. For soon there will be no one on whom to implement this Bill. Nil!

We declare that no weapon formed against us shall prosper!

Marie T Henry

Concerned teacher

bchil862@gmail.com