In light of recent allegations of a sex scandal at Bishops’ High School, the Guyana Teachers Union (GTU) is urging the Education Ministry to conduct more frequent inspections at schools so as to prevent any similar cases from occurring and to weed out from the system these issues.
GTU General Secretary Coretta McDonald told Guyana Times on Wednesday this issue in particular brings to bear the fact that both the Union and the Ministry will have to work more closely at keeping much closer eyes on the things that happen within the education system across the country.
“We have to start doing some backpedalling, to check to see where we have been defaulting in terms of our supervision of what happens in schools. How often do we visit schools? We have to take some of the blame too…Let’s start doing some random checks at schools. Let’s run the ward,” she asserted.
McDonald said these same issues could very well be happening at other schools and the officials were not aware of them. She said there might be allegations made against teachers and other persons and if these checks were done, then both the Union and the Ministry could unearth some of these issues and correct them or bring them to the attention of the authorities.
Despite this, the GTU General Secretary said the Union was extremely concerned because a number of things would have happened and there will be a ‘ripple effect’ coming out of this scandal. “It is not only about this teacher, who it has been alleged who have been performing all these acts, but it has negative effects for the reputation of the school, tarnishing the reputation of so many persons that are involved.”
The Union believes that all of the people involved will be negatively affected. “I am hoping that we can very quickly pull this whole issue out of the public domain and we sit like professionals and deal with this issue and wherever the chips have to fall, let them fall there…We need to move pass the ‘judgmental sentences and we have to be careful…it will have a psychological effect, people,” she added.
The GTU, she said, does not condone teachers getting involved in acts that involve sexual contact with children. “We have always been saying to our teachers across this country: we are professionals and we expect our teachers to conduct themselves in a professional manner. We have been saying repeatedly to them: there must always be this distinct line between teacher and student or student and teacher.”
She continued, “At no time teachers should be found in compromising positions. Our students look up to us; they trust us and when we are going to betray the trust of those students, we are doing lots of damage to them. We are not going to allow that to happen to our children.”
Asked to comment on the derogatory remarks purportedly made by the Bishops’ High School Headteacher Winifred Ellis which came in light of the recent widely publicised sexual assault allegations against a male teacher of the school, McDonald said that she believes the principal acted out of frustration.
“I don’t think the intention of the head teacher is bad. I think it is out of frustration that she lashed out in the manner that she did. But I think her intentions were good and she was trying to get her girls to be aware of the circumstances and situations that sometimes would befall them from time to time. And she was admonishing them in a manner that they should conduct themselves as girls in schools.”
Outraged by her actions, several former students, activists and members of civil society picketed the top secondary school on Tuesday.
A formal complaint against the male teacher of over 15 years was made to the Education Ministry over the weekend and was addressed to the Education Minister Nicolette Henry, among others.
Since then, Chief Education Officer (CEO) Marcel Hutson has informed the media that an investigation has been launched, while the Social Protection Ministry issued a short statement outlining that it was aware of the allegations levelled against a senior teacher at the Bishops’ High School.
As news of the alleged sexual molestation involving the male teacher broke out on social media, a number of past students reportedly came forward and related similar experiences.
Meanwhile, in the presence of his attorneys – Jerome Khan, Priyanka Sookraj and Siand Dhurjan – the teacher broke his silence on the allegations against him, which claimed that he abused his position of trust as a teacher and groomed female, and some male, students for sexual activity.
