Minister dissatisfied with teachers’ emoluments

May 10, 2017 News

…hopes to have this and other shortcomings addressed

“I have said it publicly before and I don’t mind saying it again, I am completely dissatisfied with what we pay our teachers.” This assertion was made by Senior Minister of Education, Dr. Rupert Roopnaraine.

Minister of Education, Dr. Rupert Roopnaraine

According to the Minister, “I think that is for me an issue because it doesn’t show that we prize what teachers do and it is something we have to look at and we have to keep pressing on.”
Minister Roopnaraine noted that despite the many hurdles that must be addressed in the sector, teachers have remained committed to the system. As such he noted, “I am confident that given the commitment of our teachers and the fact that we haven’t value them enough we will be forgiven [as we] take steps to rectify that.”
This was the disclosure of Minister Roopnaraine as he commented on the recently completed Commission of Inquiry [COI] into the Ministry of Education. A preliminary report of the COI was recently handed over to Minister Roopnaraine. According to Minister Roopnaraine, “We need to digest a lot of information.”
He continued, “It has been a mantra for me that we need to work hard to get education right because, frankly speaking, if we don’t get education right, we can get nothing right…It is as fundamental as that.”
Although a final report of the COI is likely to be handed over to the Ministry of Education within two weeks time, Minister Roopnaraine shared his conviction that the COI was imperative. He is convinced that “even the Preliminary Report will give us the kind of base information that we need to proceed.”
Speaking of the content of the preliminary report, Minister Roopnaraine said that the findings thus far suggest that he was vindicated to call for an inquiry into the system. The preliminary report reveals a number of shortcomings ranging from those relating to infrastructure to the curriculum.
“I was correct in establishing the Commission…it has begun to do the kind of work that needs to be done. I think this inquiry will in fact lay the basis for the kind of transformation that the entire country is awaiting and education has to play its part,” said Minister Roopnaraine.
“I can’t wait to submit it to Cabinet and have a full discussion with my colleagues in relation to how we are going to treat with the issues raised in the report.”
“We don’t want to proceed intuitively. We don’t want to proceed in terms of a notion…We want to make sure we that we have evidenced-based material on which we can advance and that is what the Commission of Inquiry has actually produced for us,” Minister Roopnaraine asserted.
As such he added, “We are very indebted to the work of the Commission. I think the hearings they have held, 98 or 99…We are grateful for the hard work done, the effort to cover the entire country and I am really looking forward to making an assessment of what our preliminary reparation work is going to involve.”
Moving in this direction is particularly important, the Minister said. He added, “I have said it in the National Assembly…I have said it time and time again, education is something we need not be divided about.”
“We should unite on education because they [the opposition side] must understand that we have a whole set of other things on which we can fight; there is no shortage of things we can fight about but we should unite on education… But frankly let’s settle on ‘we would not fight on education,’” Dr. Roopnaraine underscored.
Minister Roopnaraine said that he anxiously awaits when the final report of the COI is submitted to the National Assembly after which a decision will be made as to the next move regarding the recommendations contained in the report.
However, the Minister added, “I would prefer that the report is not buried in another Select Committee and we go on and on studying the report. I think the comprehensiveness of the report of the COI is sufficient for us to act.”
“The extent to which we are going to act is going to call for a lot of commitment and that is something that we are a little bit short of.”
Minister Roopnaraine has acknowledged that once the recommendations are accepted it will be a herculean task to implement them. Among the areas that the Commission is expected to give prominence in its final report are Information Communication Technology, Technical Vocational Education and Special Education Needs.

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