EDUCATION RESPONDS TO ISSUES RAISED BY FTA

03/05/2012

The Ministry of Education permanent secretary Dr Brij Lal says the Ministry of Education will follow the regulation set by Government whereby teachers will have to retire at the age of 55 as the rule applies to all civil servants.

“The current retirement age for civil servants is 55, which includes teachers and the Ministry of Education will abide by the regulation,”  Dr Lal said.  

“We have also put in place measures and strategies to prepare young teachers to fill the vacuum created by experienced teachers through retirement.  We have Future Leaders workshop and one is currently held at Suva Grammar for the Eastern and Central Teachers. There are short courses, induction courses; management and planning workshops and scholarships provided to competent candidates to equip and prepare them for leadership positions.”

In response to the issue of young teachers teaching lower classes in primary schools, one must realize that young and new teachers keep graduating from the Teachers Colleges as FNU Lautoka, Corpus Christie and Fulton College.

These new graduates are posted to schools by the Ministry of Education and Head Teachers are tasked to allocate classes to his or her teachers. Senior or experienced teachers are often given the lower classes of 1, 2 and 3 unless there is a genuine reason given whereby they cannot teach the young students. All primary schools do have a mixture of experienced and young and inexperienced teachers.

“No primary school is given entirely inexperienced, young teachers. There is always a mixture of the young and old, the experienced and the inexperienced teachers. More to that we must also believe in our Teacher Colleges that they train teachers to be able to teach class one to class eight. The teacher colleges also teach Values education as compassion, humility and honesty,” said the permanent secretary.   

Secondary school teachers are also undergoing practical training to improve their performance and to prepare them for leadership roles.  

“As for our secondary schools, the underperforming teachers are put under experienced and performing Principals to learn from their work performance, attitude, behavior and their character in total. While experience can be a good teacher, we must believe in our young teachers and assist them as much as possible,” Dr Lal said.

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