Contender for the post of president-elect of the Jamaica Teachers’ Association 2025-26 Dr Maureen Mullings-Nelson says the question of performance-based pay for teachers “must be rubbished” until “the inequities” in the education system are fixed.

Mullings-Nelson, the practicum placement officer at The Mico University College in the Corporate Area, was among the three JTA president-elect candidates participating in the union’s Presidential Debates 2025 last Friday.

She said teachers must first be given the resources they need and the special education concerns addressed before performance-based pay can be given meaningful consideration.

“I present the case of school A and school B. School A, five students; school B, five students. School A, they have all students paying the tuition fees, they have an excellent alumni, they have great parental support. Their labs are fairly modern and they have a good structure. These students, most times, would come to these schools at the high end of the Primary Exit Profile exam. But then, the case of school B, which one and a half students will pay school fee, single-parent household, fathers have died or are in prison; they don’t have an excellent alumni system, and these students are what we call the primer, pre-primer and non-starters,” Nelson outlined in support of her stance.

“The latest report that I read said that 97 per cent of special education students are in our general education classroom. Until we have a special education policy, and not boast about an AI policy, then, and only then, can we begin to have a conversation about performance-based incentive. I repeat, it must be rubbished,” she declared.

In the meantime, Mullings-Nelson, who lamented that some educators have died while awaiting their pensions because of the lethargic system, said she would advocate immediate pension payments for retirees.

“It is said that stories plus statistics equal strong advocacy; the stories of our pensioners as I traverse on this campaign, I’ve heard stories, but the data is also there to show that our pensioners have to wait 18 months, two years, and God forbid a few of them have died waiting on pension, it would therefore mean a reform to have a pension policy in place which would make late payment a legal violation and not just a bureaucratic issue,” Mullings-Nelson stated.

“So this again is through robust advocacy, showing the Government of Jamaica that it is done in other countries, and if we are serious about our educators we will do this. So, again, stories, the many stories that we can capture; the data is there as evidence, and this strong advocate will definitely push for a pension policy to be implemented to support this,” she pledged.

Asked what would be the first step towards this in her first year of leadership, Mullings-Nelson said: “The first step is a meeting, because everything has to be done through advocacy. It’s really meeting with the powers that be to show again the statistics, the data, that this can be done. For example, when we know that we know when the pension pensioners are going to go off, why can’t we put a tracking system in place to say ‘Paulette is going off today.’ We start to map and we start to do all the things in place to say that at this point her pension must be paid.

“We can do it, it is done in other jurisdictions, as I said, and we can do it in Jamaica,” she added.

Mullings-Nelson, former JTA President La Sonja Harrison, and Jermaine Williams, a senior teacher at Manning’s School in Westmoreland, are vying for the post of JTA president-elect 2025-26 to take over after Mark Malabver, who takes presidential office on August 31, 2025.