Coming out of recent discussions between the Guyana Teachers Union (GTU) and the Education Ministry regarding the next multi-year agreement was the revision of the programmes currently being offered at the Cyril Potter College Education (CPCE).
The Union has urged the Ministry to look at commencing this process aimed at bringing Guyanese teachers on par with those in the Caribbean.
At present, the CPCE offers an Associate Degree in Education (ADE) (two years); Associate Degree in Education (one year); and, the Trained Teachers’ Certificate (three years). While the ADE programme was introduced in 2010 and was designed mainly to create a qualitative difference from the Trained Teachers’ Certificate, the GTU believes that the time has come for the programme to be revised. Having the ADE introduced at the CPCE was essential, since the other Caricom countries have already implemented the programme. Some countries have also raised the bar even further, whereby an individual seeking to become a teacher must have a degree before pursuing the profession.
GTU General Secretary Coretta McDonald told Guyana Times on Tuesday that the revision was not specifically to do with the ADE programme, but would also take into account the other programmes offered at the country’s only teachers’ training college to make it more modern and up to date.
GTU General Secretary Coretta McDonald
McDonald said often times teachers were trained for specific roles, but other issues arise in the classroom and teachers must be properly trained to respond effectively and timely. The GTU is, therefore, pushing to have teachers trained to deal with children who misbehave at school, to look for signs in children who may be abused at home, and how to effectively handle these situations.
Meanwhile, the GTU official told this newspaper that more teachers were becoming trained and to assist this process, the CPCE has given preference to teachers already in the system this year. “So, you might hear of persons applying to attend CPCE, maybe in some cases students leaving school a year or two ago and they were not accepted; it’s not because they don’t want to accept them.”
Despite this, there are several teachers already in the system who have not obtained formal training from the CPCE.
The GTU has also requested that more focus be placed on ensuring that physical education and drama be fully included in the curriculum of every school. The Union’s General Secretary said these subjects have been placed on the back burner for a long time. The GTU has also proposed a 40 per cent across-the-board salary increase for all public school teachers. It must be noted, however, that in the previous agreement, the GTU had managed to get for teachers countrywide only a five per cent salary increase over the course of five years.
McDonald explained that the GTU would like to see the salaries of all categories of teachers increased by 45 per cent in 2017 and by 50 per cent for the following three years (2018-2020). She explained that the GTU had arrived at these figures after considering inflation.
Although negotiations in the above regard had not been fruitful with the previous Government, McDonald told Guyana Times, the GTU was hoping that negotiations with this current Administration would see teachers being placed in scales, which reflect the results of the debunching, in keeping with the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) governing the period 2011-2015.
This would mean that teachers with advanced levels of training would be placed on a scale that is different from those of recently graduated teachers.
The GTU has proposed that the payment of sums of money in regard to debunching be retroactive to 2011, when the previous MoU was inked and if the MoU was approved, teachers would also benefit from monthly emotional, stress, risk and maintenance allowances.
