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GTU says members to boycott SBA marking from next year
– cites failure to pay teachers for additional work
Unless the Caribbean Examinations Council (CXC) is prepared to pay for the marking of School Based
GTU President,
Mark Lyte
Assessments (SBA), the Guyana Teachers’ Union (GTU) will be advocating for teachers to desist from offering their services in this regard.
This disclosure was made by GTU President, Mark Lyte, who told this publication yesterday that the intention is to embrace a decision made by the Caribbean Union of Teachers (CUT) at a Council meeting convened in Belize last year.
The CUT is a federation of teaching trade unions in the Caribbean, and according to Lyte, the local Union is very supportive of the position taken by the Federation.
According to the GTU President, the call for CXC to pay teachers for the marking of SBAs was premised on the fact that the examining body usually pays for the marking of the written aspects of examinations, but has never opted to pay for the marking of SBAs, although it translates to additional work for teachers.
Some 2,000 local teachers are involved in the marking of SBAs on an annual basis and according to Lyte, the GTU, like the other Unions across the Caribbean, is desirous of seeing teachers being compensated for their added efforts. He noted that while a cost has not been worked out, it is hoped that the teachers will be paid per SBA folder marked.
Although the score of the SBA can amount to about 20 per cent of the total score of an examination, a candidate can however forfeit his/her entire examination score if an SBA is not submitted. For this reason, a senior teacher stressed the importance of SBAs to the examination process.
Moreover, the GTU President said that while its members are prepared to adhere to the CUT decision, this will however be enforced until the New Year.
“We feel that the time is too short for us to enforce it now, but if next year nothing is done by the time CXC comes around, we will adapt that position,” said Lyte as he alluded to the move by the Barbados Secondary Teachers’ Union (BSTU) which has already refrained from marking SBAs.
“The GTU will follow suit as of next year if the CXC is unprepared to pay teachers for marking SBAs. We will supervise it and do the corrections, but we will not mark it similarly to the action that has been taken by the Barbados Secondary Teachers’ Union, and I think that is something that most Caribbean country will adopt,” added Lyte.
Barbados is the only Caribbean territory that has thus far enforced the decision.
The Caribbean Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) in March reported that “as of this academic year, the teachers that belong to the Barbados Secondary Teachers’ Union will not be correcting school-based assessments.
That is unless they are paid to do so by the Caribbean Examinations Council.”
The news agency went on to report that President of the BSTU, Mary Ann Redman, had informed that the teachers however are mindful of the importance of the SBAs and will not do anything that will jeopardize the students CXC or CAPE results.”
But it was noted too that the teachers are now demanding that they be compensated for their hard work. Redman, the CBC added, related that while the teachers are correcting the SBAs as well as now imputing the marks, it has become too much of a burden.
She, too, at a press conference, made reference to the fact that CXC already pays teachers to correct the written examinations, but continues to refuse to pay for the SBAs. Moreover, she outlined that her Union has the support of the CUT to enforce the boycott, adding that while most other Caribbean teachers’ unions agree with the move, they have yet to decide on what course of action they will take.
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