GTU executives preparing to attend CUT meeting

Jul 19, 2015 News

– anticipate discussion on SBA marking

The Caribbean Union of Teachers (CUT) is gearing to convene its biennial conference next month and among the issues expected to gain urgent attention is that of the marking of School Based Assessments (SBAs).
Since CUT is a federation of teaching trade unions in the Caribbean the executive of the local Guyana Teachers Union (GTU) has plans to attend the conference.
The conference is slated for Dominica and will be held over the period August 3 to August 7, 2015. “Usually the forum is attended by the executives of the Union and at that particular time we will be voting for representatives to be part of the CUT executive…we will have like nominations and voting for President, General Secretary and so on,” explained GTU President, Mark Lyte.
He however shared his conviction that “high on the agenda will be one of the issues that the GTU has been highlighting recently – the SBA marking issue.”

GTU President, Mark Lyte

According to him, “I think that a definite position will be taken by all Caribbean countries with regards to who will pay for the marking of SBAs.”
Guyana’s position, according to Lyte, is that either the Ministry of Education or the Caribbean Examination Council (CXC) will facilitate payment for teachers for marking SBAs. Until then, he noted that local teachers will be “prepared to guide and correct but not facilitate the actual marking. If they are not paid they will not mark.”
At a CUT meeting held in Belize last year, the SBA marking issue was brought to the fore and it was decided at that level that teachers should desist from marking SBAs without pay.
The GTU President had earlier told this publication that 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, it was expected that the decision would have been enforced Caribbean-wide by next 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 enforced the move to have teachers refrain from marking SBAs.
“The GTU will follow suit as of next year if 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 countries will adopt,” added Lyte.