NAME OF FEATURE | THE GLEANER | SUNDAY, JUNE 9, 2024 21 JTA 60TH ANNIVERSARY FEATURE THE COUNTRY awaits the decision of the Joint Select Committee of Parliament on the Jamaica Teaching Council Bill. The bill seeks to establish a governing body for the teaching profession and to institute a regime for the licensing and registration of all government-paid teachers. Some see the proposed Jamaica Teaching Council (JTC) and the legislative moves to establish it as perhaps the most contentious issue to have emerged in the teaching profession, at least in the modern era. It is even argued that the JTC, as originally fashioned or conceived, poses the greatest threat to teaching and teachers and consequently, to education. The discussions surrounding the JTC as the institution to regulate the teaching profession have been going on for nearly 20 years. In recent years, it has made progress towards becoming law, and in 2022 the JTC Bill, was laid in Parliament. Following submissions by various stakeholders, including the Jamaica Teachers’ Association (JTA), to the Joint Select Committee of Parliament, the wait is on for the report to be taken back to Parliament. The JTC and the legislative action to make it become law is one of the issues that has brought out the greatest degree of advocacy in the history of the JTA. Education and advocacy have gone from discussions within the organs of the JTA through to pushback on public media, to presentations in the Parliament. The efforts to do right by teachers in the face of ugly or even dangerous proposals of the JTC even led to a street protest when the leadership of the JTA marched on the Ministry of Education at Heroes Circle, Kingston. There have been several changes over the period when the JTC was proposed and started to take shape to, among other things, license teachers. Clayton Hall was president-elect of the JTA in 2013 amid more talk of the need for the JTC to come into force. Then, and later, as JTA president, and after that as immediate past president, he had to make it his duty to know about what was being proposed. Later still, when he returned to the JTA in administration as a regional officer, his role in the Member Services Unit continued, with a focus on the JTC proposal. Now, the JTC falls directly under his portfolio as deputy secretary general for Member Services. Looking back over the last decade at least, Mr Hall said there were some key issues or concepts that were anathema to the JTA, posed a danger to the teaching profession, and, therefore, the union fought back against them. 1. THE COMPOSITION OF THE JTC BOARD The JTA argued that no entity or group purporting to be responsible for making a profession more professional should have as its majority non-professionals of that group. In other words, the Jamaica Teaching Council should not be majority populated by non-teachers. “At one stage, even the commissioner of corrections had a seat on the Teaching Council. We found that objectionable,” said Mr Hall. 2. THE GRIEVANCE PROCEDURES In the early stages, the bill outlined three separate tracks for dealing with grievances: a) the school board; b) the Ministry of Education; and c) The Teaching Council. Clause 51 instructs the Teaching Council, upon receiving a complaint, to refer the complaint to the education ministry or school board for an investigation or to conduct its own enquiry. According to Mr Hall, it was unacceptable to the JTA that it was proposed that if a teacher were to be tried for an alleged infraction or disciplinary breach by the ministry or the school board, the matter would have to be reported to the JTC, which could then decide if it would undertake a separate trial. “If you were tried by either the board or the ministry, that would have to be reported to the Council, who could choose to try you again,” Mr Hall said. 3. THE FINANCING OF THE JTC It had been proposed that the JTC would be financially self-sufficient and would be required to earn its keep from fees and fines levied against the teacher. Mr. Hall said: “In a situation where the [licence] fees and fines would be set by the Council, we thought that would become a new financial burden, a new tax on the teacher.”To illustrate, he said there could be a situation where there was a hole in the budget of the JTC, and it might decide to plug that hole by simply increasing the licensing fee for that year. Conscious that the JTC would need funds for its activities, the JTA proposed what it considered a reasonable compromise - a fixed set rate for licences based on a percentage of the teacher’s salary. That would prevent the THE TROUBLESOME JAMAICA TEACHING COUNCIL PLEASE SEE COUNCIL, 27
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