Minister of Education Ronald Jones says he will be surprised if there is a push-back by teachers’ unions to the creation of a Teaching Service Commission (TSC).
He told the DAILY NATION on Saturday that it was the Ministry of Education which brought the Cabinet paper some months ago to facilitate the move.
“The teaching service has over 3 200 teachers and therefore you need a dedicated commission. It has always been needed, but it was never done . . . . The work of the Public Service Commission dealing with nearly everybody else in the Public Service, it is really too much and in the past we had too many delays, issues of appointments and discipline. Hopefully this would take away a lot of the struggle that we have had in the past to do those things that were necessary.”
Jones added: “I know the unions in the past, when I was heavily engaged in [them], were pushing over time for the appointment of a Teaching Service Commission . . . . In fact, a lot of the work done by the Barbados Union of Teachers and Barbados Secondary Teachers’ Union is what formed the basis of moving forward on this agenda, so that would be really a massive surprise to me if there was a push-back,” he said. (JS)
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