JTA President Dr. Mark Smith
.png)
JTA President Dr. Mark Smith
By Racquel Porter
New President of the Jamaica Teachers Association Dr. Mark Smith says the ongoing issue of educators migrating for better-paying jobs overseas is due to lack of investment in education by successive governments.
Dr. Smith, who was delivering his inaugural address on Monday evening during the JTA's annual conference in Trelawny, argued that this has potentially caused an existential crisis.
"We have, for years, given lip service to the improvements in education, talking the talk, but not walking the talk. We have heard governments from both sides of the political aisle wax eloquently of the need to invest in education while pursuing policies that reduce the effective funding to the teacher and the student in the classroom," he complained.
The JTA president further argued that investments in education cannot be disaggregated from investing in teachers.
"I sit oftentimes quite bewildered as I listen to pundits, educational and policy practitioners, technocrats and politicians muse about why teachers are leaving our shores. They pretend as though it is a mystery wrapped up in a puzzle and buried in an enigma, when it is clear for the sightless to see that it is the quality of life," he reasoned.
The average teacher, Dr. Smith noted, must raise a family, travel to work, buy lunch, pay their bills and engage in other activities, such as providing lunch for a hungry student. All this, he bemoaned, has to be done on an average pay of US$36 a day.
comments powered by Disqus
All feeds
