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Time to call roll on the teachers
Kaieteur News – Schools reopen. Children sharpen their pencils. Parents iron uniforms. The bell rings. But where are the teachers? Some of them still missing in action, three weeks after the term began. And we’re not talking about a flu bug or a late bus. No, this is something far worse. This is not AWOL. This is abandonment.
Let’s not sugarcoat it. When a teacher fails to turn up after three weeks, it’s not a case of “personal leave” or “family emergency.” It’s a case of desertion. If soldiers abandoned their posts like this, we’d call it mutiny. Yet in education, we still treat it like an excusable absence. “Oh, Miss not come in yet? Maybe she’ll show up next week.” Next week? By then, the children could’ve learnt more from YouTube than from the chalkboard.
And please, let’s stop romanticizing these absences. Teaching is not a carnival where you can decide whether you’re “playing” this season. If you don’t turn up for duty, you’ve essentially un-enrolled yourself. Strike them off the books. Clean the register. Let’s not confuse a profession with a part-time hobby.
What we need is a daily roll call—every region, every school, every morning. Absent? Report it. Still absent tomorrow? Report it again. Third week in a row? Hand over the pink slip. Regional Education Departments should have a dashboard that lights up every time a teacher pulls a disappearing act. Accountability should not be a mystical concept; it should be a spreadsheet. One that is accurate though.
This is not about being heartless. This is about discipline. How can we preach punctuality to children when the very people teaching them treat the school term like a flexible work-from-home arrangement? The children are expected to line up at 9:00 am and in some schools by 8:30 am sharp, but their teachers stroll in three weeks late. If they stroll in at all.
If teachers want to play hide and seek, they can do it on their own time, not on the taxpayers’ dime. Because every absent teacher means a class of children left idle, learning more about the art of waiting than about math or reading.
So let’s stop pretending. Absenteeism is not an extended vacation. It is a dereliction of duty. And the cure is simple: roll call, record, report, remove. Discipline begins at the top of the classroom, not the back.
Talk half. Leff half.
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THE BLUNT OF THE DAY
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Sir. Ronald Sanders
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Weekend Cartoon
If absentee teachers not docked missing days at school- the system is not
working. Monthly salary means, being paid monthly, minus any absences-
which are legally allowed-sick, annual. However, they still get their salary
during school closing for Summer, Spring, Winter, Fall.
Teachers, should be docked pay for unauthorized absences, fired for tardiness.