Former President of the Jamaica Teachers’ Association (JTA), Owen Speid is suggesting that the country’s education system is facing a “dilemma” with the migration of experienced teachers from Jamaican classrooms.

“How are you going to replace them (experienced teachers) with one or two teachers who have just graduated from teachers’ college? It takes maybe three years or more to know the curriculum if you’re going to teach CSEC or CAPE,” he claimed.

Speid was speaking during a Twitter space discussion on the state of the Jamaican teaching industry on Thursday.

The issue of teacher migration and resignation have been a topical issue for several weeks, with some 248 public school teachers resigning since July, according to data provided by the Education and Youth Ministry last week.

The ministry has since pushed forward several measures to stem the effects of teacher migration and resignation such as the deployment of 968 specialist teachers, the hiring of retired teachers and persons with first degrees without teaching certification.

However, Speid is maintaining that quality teachers are required and not just quantity, though he admitted that the more than 900 teachers leaving training institutions was a “paltry” figure.

“What guarantee are you going to have that if you lose 80 maths teachers, that you are going to get back 80 maths teachers to replace those? And you can’t look for quantity either, you have to look for quality. Experience matters! The teachers who have spent many, many years in the classroom and developed their skills and hone their skills, and they are there teaching the kids over the years and getting good success,” he informed.

“You’re not going to just come from teacher’s college and get into the business of teaching, preparing kids for CAPE and CSEC just like that. It is going to take time,” Speid maintained.

Speid, who migrated to the United States last year, noted that foreign recruiters are engaged in a business, and so, they are taking “the best teachers first and sometimes the most experienced teachers first”, instead of “inferior” teachers.

“… And so, we’re in a dilemma, because guess what? You’re not going to be able to replace the specialist teachers, and then if you are graduating 900 (specialist teachers), that’s a paltry number if you look at it technically,” he declared.

Based on the number of teachers colleges locally, Speid questioned why the nation was only producing a little over 900 specialist teachers.

“The truth is when you look at how many teachers’ colleges we have – and mind you, I am still not impressed by the number of teachers’ colleges at this time because by now we should have had more universities than teachers’ colleges.

“I can’t see for the life of me why teachers’ colleges that are so old are still being called teachers’ colleges. By now, they should have been upgraded to universities,” the senior educator lamented.

One of those colleges Speid highlighted was GC Foster College in St Catherine.

Pointing to Jamaica’s success in athletics over the years, he questioned why there was no university established in the country with its sole purpose being geared towards sports education.

“We’re still calling the main trainer for athletes in Jamaica a college, rather than a university. These are some of the things we need to address and stop thinking about that we can easily replace teachers, so it is not a problem.

“That is the mindset coming from higher up, that, ‘Okay, the country can get some remittance’… and then we are hearing now, ‘Oh, they can be replaced and that’s okay’. It’s not okay!” Speid reasoned.

At the same time, he admitted that the island was producing too little teachers and more needed to be done to attract students who leave secondary school with exceptional CSEC and CAPE passes to the profession.