TEACHERS DESERVE BETTER

Sep 15, 2016 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

Guyana cannot continue to bemoan the poor standards of education in the country while it persists in paying teachers poor salaries. The salaries of teachers must be substantially increased and then it must be maintained at levels above the inflation rate if Guyana is to be able to retain the hundreds of teachers that graduate from the teachers’ training college each year.
We are told that eighteen hundred persons have applied for admission into the Cyril Potter College of Education. The school cannot accommodate all these persons. It means that the majority of the applicants will be denied.
The large number of applications suggests two things. It suggests first that a great many persons are looking for employment and they see employment as coming only from the government side. Jobs are simply not there and people are becoming desperate.
The large number of applications also suggests that people may be looking for opportunities outside of Guyana. A large number of our teachers, in fact most of our better teachers, began an exodus from these shores to other Caribbean countries from the late 1970s when teachers were publicly humiliated by the rapid decline in their living standards. Many of our best teachers left to go to the Caribbean islands and later to Botswana to teach. As a result, the standard of education in Guyana has fallen tremendously.
All governments tend to stress the importance of education. The PPP, when it took over, took a step towards paying teachers higher than what was paid to other workers. It then effectively in its negotiations with the teachers’ unions offered wage increases which more or less were tied to what the general public service received.
The new APNU+AFC government seems to have forgotten the country’s educators. It has not attempted in its sixteen months of office to offer a wage increase that would allow the education system to retain teachers whose services are in high demand across the Region. The government keeps saying how important education is but it has made no moves to address a level of remuneration for teachers that would stem to exodus from the system.
In the meantime more private schools are being established. Those who can afford are willing to pay for the education of their children. Those who cannot have to settle for whatever the public system has to offer and to supplement this schooling with extra lessons.
Yet each year hundreds of teachers are graduating from the Cyril Potter College of Education (CPCE). A large number of these are graduates for exports. They will not find good paying jobs within the teaching profession in Guyana and many of them, in fact, are training to take up jobs overseas.
The government cannot continue to treat teachers as second class workers. Teachers need to receive an increase far higher than that offered to public servants. This will allow for higher skilled and qualified persons to move towards the teaching profession. Right now, there are persons within the public service who earn more than teachers. This is an insult to the educators of the nation.
The government has said that it is offering between 10% and 1% increases to public servants. Many people are interpreting this as a 10% increase retroactive to January of this year. But what is the overall increase. Is it 5% or 6%? The Leader of the Opposition says that it is 6%. The cost to the treasury of the proposed increase has not been stated. This would give an idea as to whether the government can afford to pay more.
But can the government, when it comes to teachers, afford not to pay more? Can the nation’s education system be improved by the present level of wages paid to teachers? It cannot, and unless the government recognizes that the first step towards the improvement of education is for higher wages for teachers, it will only be pouting empty rhetoric.
There are persons working within the government who are embarrassments to their teachers. Yet, some of these government workers are earning multiple times what their tutors are earning.
Public service wages are important, but far more important, is what is being paid to those who educate this public service.

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