Would it not have been wiser to allow Dr. Hutson to continue as the CEO?

Dec 06, 2019 Letters

DEAR EDITOR,

It shocked me, and I am sure, many other teachers across the teaching fraternity that the Chief Education Officer, Dr. Marcel Hutson was sent on pre-retirement leave or ‘fired’. I am surprised by this for a number of reasons.
Firstly, under the Chief Education Officer (CEO), there are four (4) Deputy Chief Education Officers. Currently, all the DCEOs are functioning in an acting capacity and have been doing so for a number of years.
Under the Deputy Chief Education Officers are the three (3) Assistant Chief Education Officers for Nursery, Primary and Secondary. All the Assistant Chief Education Officers are also functioning in an acting capacity.
The organisational structure of the Ministry of Education requires more than 6 Senior Education Officers (SEO). Less than half of that number have been appointed.
The Minister of Education, Dr. Henry is reported to have refuted claims that Dr. Hutson was fired, and hence has not been attending meetings for a while, by saying that “When officers are going off on retirement, that is the time you’ll want to build the capacity of those that will be succeeding him,” adding that the Deputy Chief Education Officer and Assistant Chief Education Officer were being “exposed to more meetings”.
Editor, this is an anomaly that the Honourable Minister must explain: how do you build capacity by having officers act in a position for such extensive periods of time? How do you build capacity by having someone attend a meeting in a capacity that they may not be appointed to? For years, the Ministry of Education has dressed its officers in ‘borrowed robes’.
Secondly, when Dr. Hutson goes on retirement leave, the person who will act as CEO will be a person who is acting as DCEO. Every other officer will go up one place acting. What we have here is a theatre not a Ministry!
Thirdly, with elections early next year, the dissolution of the National Assembly and the reduction in powers of the Minister of Education, the CEO’s position becomes even more important than what it normally is.
Due to his institutional knowledge of current programmes, would it not have been wiser to allow Dr. Hutson to continue as the CEO?
Over the years, I have observed that wisdom is not the strong suit of the Ministry of Education.
Yours faithfully,
Mohammed S. Hussain

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