Barbados Union of Teachers Urges Ministry of Education to Reassign Displaced Primary School Teachers for Smooth Start of New School Term

By Sheria Brathwaite

The Barbados Union of Teachers (BUT) is hopeful that the Ministry of Education can find a place for the more than 20 primary school teachers who lost their jobs days ahead of the start of the new school term.

Following an hour-long meeting with education officials on Monday, Lovell told Barbados TODAY that the BUT is still insisting that those teachers be reassigned, as their absence could lead to significant challenges when school begins.

“From our point of view, we are still adamant that teachers should be given the opportunity to be reassigned given the fact that the absence of these teachers in the classroom can have a significant effect on the teaching and learning process across several schools,” he said.

“Today, we were informed that some schools are short of the staff complement. In some cases, four or more teachers are absent or missing from certain schools. So, given the fact that these teachers are not reassigned, it may add additional pressure on those teachers who will remain in the school system to deal with the remaining students, and it can also hamper the delivery of certain programmes throughout the school.”

Last Friday, the teachers’ contracts were not renewed and Lovell said then that the union was willing to do what was necessary to protect the interest of the workers.

“We are hopeful that places can be found for these teachers given that persons will be going off on leave, maternity leave and some teachers would have also requested no pay leave. So we are hopeful that spaces can be found to accommodate these teachers and in the system for this academic school year,” he said.

“If it’s necessary to have ‘X’ amount of teachers at a school and you don’t have that amount at that school, it can affect the delivery of education in a case where a teacher falls ill. It may lead to stress and burnout in some cases where persons may have to carry a heavier load than intended. But we trust that the Ministry of Education will find a way to accommodate these teachers and we are hopeful that given the meeting today, they will come back to give us an update before the end of the week.”

The BUT president said while he was still collecting information on how many teachers were impacted, he was certain there were in excess of 20.

Asked if the Ministry explained why the teachers were retrenched, Lovell said: “We were informed that there are more teachers than established posts at this time. There are 1 639 primary school teachers.”

Several efforts to reach an official from the ministry were unsuccessful.

He said the affected teachers were concerned about not being able to meet financial commitments.

“Some people are a bit nervous given the commitments they have. Some teachers have children to send to school, some have mortgages, some have other commitments that can only be met with employment. But apart from that, these teachers genuinely want to be in the classroom because teaching is a part of their DNA and they love it. They just want to be able to interact with the students that they’ve grown accustomed to over the years,” Lovell said.