Cabinet Secretary Dr Roger Luncheon yesterday announced that the way has been cleared for the recruitment of graduate teachers from overseas, particularly for Mathematics and Science subjects.
He made the disclosure yesterday at his post-Cabinet news briefing at the Office of the President, where he explained that the request to go that route had originated from the Ministry of Education, which had made a case to adopt a model from previous years.
According to Luncheon, there is an urgent need for teachers in those areas, given their importance to development.
“The urgency in responding to the creative needs for Mathematics and Science teachers now has more or less outstripped what national production levels can provide and this is why the decision has had to be examined and looked at to return to an older model of addressing the human resource needs in the teaching profession,” he said.
Remuneration, he added, would be in keeping with the established system used for other recruited professionals.
“Many of the sentiments, particularly those that were of [a] more provocative nature, were addressed in the context of existing arrangements for overseas recruitment for specialists in other areas, … [where] Cabinet had already agreed that overseas recruitment was necessary to respond to our situation of shortages in Guyana,” he said.
When contacted by this newspaper yesterday, Guyana Teachers’ Union (GTU) President Colin Bynoe said he had not seen the Cabinet Secretary’s pronouncement and would like to do so before he commented on the matter.
Meanwhile, Luncheon said that he did not believe teacher migration was the only reason for the shortage in the two particular subject areas. “Whether the shortages have been created by the outward migration or increased demand, I suspect that it’s a bit more multi-factorial than just outward migration.
Definitely the increase in percentage of children attending primary and those that move from primary to secondary, the provision of secondary education in regions hitherto not provided or not provided at that level has definitely increased the demand,” he said.
Questioned on what is being done to keep teachers on these shores, Luncheon said hopefully the multi-year agreement to be signed with the GTU shortly could agree on the conditions that would reduce the attrition rate.
He added that the administration is also working to retain those teachers with the requisite skills who may have reached the retirement age of 55 years.
