Education Budget – not for Teachers

Feb 15, 2022 Letters

Dear Editor

How come in a budget (2022) of $74.4 B, there is once again no mention of upgrading the salaries of teachers? Why is it that the most fundamental contributors to human resources development continue to be stultified in a compensation structure deriving from the colonial days? Why are teachers in all grades of schools victims of such glaring negligence? They are the only ‘public servants’ whose productivity can be evaluated, and yet have not benefitted from any performance related increments for the last fifteen years at least.
What the recent blurb inheres is that after the investment in training (by whom), the (licensed) graduates will be rewarded by what is perhaps the most derisible compensation structure of the teaching profession in the Caribbean, at least.
One question the proposed new trainees are bound to ask is to which of the following grades will they be appointed: Teacher Aide; Acting Teacher; Pupil Teacher I/II; Temporary Unqualified Teacher; Temporary Qualified Master III/II; Trained Teacher; Non-Graduate Senior Assistant Master; Head of Department; Non-Graduate Senior Master; Untrained Graduate Master; Graduate Deputy Head; Graduate Head.
The above obfuscation in Grades need desperately to be clarified. Not even the budget manipulators over the past decades have noted such basic (de)valuation of scales like the following examples:
a) TS5 (B) $156,685 – $169,341
b) TS5 (B1) $153,886 – $166,540
c) TS8 (A) $175,995 – $193,169
d) TS8 (B) $178,147 – $191,027
Then there is the insult of a fixed salary for the highest Grade – PRINCIPAL – for life, fortunately which ends formally at fifty-five years, like all public servants. One hopes future trainees may not be discouraged by the above recital.
Regards
E.B. John
Organisational Development and

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