GTU anticipates senior promotion for teachers by September

Mar 23, 2018 News

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– hopes for amicable relationship with new TSC

“Teachers deserve to be promoted at the soonest possible time.”
This is the firm belief of officials within the Guyana Teachers’ Union [GTU] who are optimistic that with a new Teaching Service Commission [TSC] in place, teachers who had become eligible for promotion during the past two years will be afforded this deserving elevation.
A new Commission was appointed in February of this year.
According to GTU President, Mr. Mark Lyte, “we are happy to see a new Commission in place because since September of last year we hadn’t a Commission.” The lack of a Commission, according to Lyte, would have essentially stalled the promotion process for teachers.
Public school teachers were last elevated to senior positions early last year. However, those promotions were for the year 2015. This was due to concerns relating to the promotion process that had caused it to be a matter for the court.

In 2015 the union had moved to the court to have the TSC and the School Boards review their preliminary lists of senior promotions. Because of that court matter, the 2015 promotions were held up, and were only fast-tracked last year, despite the court’s ruling towards the end of 2016 in favour of the review called for by the GTU.
According to Lyte, while the union is anxious to see the Commission get started on new promotions, it is accepting of the fact that “it will have a lot of work to do in order to make that possible.”
In the meantime, he said that “our concern is that several teachers within the system have not had a chance to be promoted within the last two years. For almost three years, some teachers have not benefited from promotions, and so we would like the Commission to bear that in mind…we are not laying any blame, because we recognise this Commission is new and will need to settle in before the work really gets down.”
This is especially in light of the fact, Lyte noted, that the Commission has on board four individuals who are new to its work.
Sitting at the helm of the Commission as Chairman is Mr. Allan Munroe and Ms. Avril Crawford is the Vice Chairperson, while the other members are new.
“We have no problem with the present composition….while we have limited information on the new members, we are confident that some of them come with an educational background,” said Lyte.
He added, “You see the ideal thing in choosing a Commission is to have people who have a teaching background and are familiar with the rules. But we have to give them a chance to see how they will adapt…they haven’t done anything major for us to say we don’t like this or that. Basically we would like to see them get on the ball and start delivering.”
Regarding the senior promotions, Lyte said that the Union has met with officials of the Ministry of Education and “we expect a revised promotion list will be looked at shortly and sent over to the Commission.” This is necessary, Lyte said, as there might have been some movement among teachers, since at least two previous lists were submitted.
In the coming week, Lyte said that the two sides are likely to scrutinise revised lists coming out of the various regions, after which these will be sent to the TSC for its attention.
“We hope that when that is done there will be no delay,” said Lyte as he added, “We are expecting a better relationship with the Commission.”
The GTU and the former Leila Ramson-headed Commission were often at loggerheads on issues relating to teachers, particularly the promotion process. But according to Lyte, “We want to see the union and the Commission having an enhanced working relationship so that we can identify and share our concerns and these can be amicably resolved instead of us protesting and writing letters. We want to work with them in the interest of education. We already have a very good relationship with the Ministry of Education, and we believe we can have this with the Commission too.”
He, however, added that, ““We know that what we are asking for is likely to be quite challenging, but the work is still there to be done. We know that they are dealing with junior appointments; they are treating with other matters that were pending since the last Commission was dissolved. They have a lot of work but from our perspective, looking at our members, we would like to see another set of senior promotions done for 2018.”
According to Lyte, the union is hoping that moves would be made to fast-track the process so that senior promotions for teachers could take effect from the new school year which begins in September.

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