Trinidad men not joining the teach­ing pro­fes­sion

(Trinidad Guardian) As Trinidad & Tobago joined the rest of the world in cel­e­brat­ing World Teach­ers’ Day yes­ter­day, ques­tions have arisen about what in­cen­tives can be of­fered lo­cal­ly to at­tract more males to the teach­ing pro­fes­sion.

Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter An­tho­ny Gar­cia said there was cur­rent­ly a dearth of male teach­ers, es­pe­cial­ly at the pri­ma­ry lev­el.

 
Com­pli­ment­ing the na­tion’s teach­ers for their con­tin­ued ef­forts and ded­i­ca­tion to du­ty, Gar­cia said, “We are cur­rent­ly over­sub­scribed as there are large num­bers of per­sons who are de­sirous of en­ter­ing the teach­ing ser­vice and who have the req­ui­site qual­i­fi­ca­tions.

“This over­sup­ply ex­tends across the EC­CE, pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary lev­els but we are hav­ing a prob­lem at­tract­ing many males to the pro­fes­sion.”

Gar­cia said ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion fa­cil­i­ties such as the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI); the Uni­ver­si­ty of T&T (UTT); and the Uni­ver­si­ty of the South­ern Caribbean (USC) each had rig­or­ous teach­ing pro­grammes which were en­cour­ag­ing more and more peo­ple to in­vest in this area of study.

Agree­ing with Gar­cia that not enough men were be­ing at­tract­ed to the teach­ing pro­fes­sion, Trinidad and To­ba­go Uni­fied Teach­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTUTA) Pres­i­dent Lyns­ley Doo­d­hai said, “If you go to any school and check now, there is a lack of male teach­ers. If you were to check any school now, you would find that be­tween 75 to 80 per cent of the teach­ers are fe­male.”

At­tribut­ing the short­age to the is­sue of com­pen­sa­tion and the lack of up­ward mo­bil­i­ty in this par­tic­u­lar pro­fes­sion, Doo­d­hai ex­plained, “Men may not be at­tract­ed to the pro­fes­sion be­cause the com­pen­sa­tion that goes with the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty and qual­i­fi­ca­tions re­quired for the job is not enough to en­sure they can look af­ter and prop­er­ly pro­vide for their fam­i­lies. Al­so, they may feel there is more scope for them to progress in oth­er fields.”

Since its in­cep­tion in 1994, World Teach­ers’ Day recog­nis­es the ex­per­tise, en­er­gy and pas­sion of teach­ers who are the cor­ner­stone of ed­u­ca­tion sys­tems around the world.

This year, the theme is—Young Teach­ers: The Fu­ture of the Pro­fes­sion.

In a re­lease, TTUTA said, “In ad­di­tion to pro­vid­ing the oc­ca­sion to cel­e­brate the teach­ing pro­fes­sion world­wide and to take stock of achieve­ments, it will al­so al­low for some of the per­ti­nent is­sues crit­i­cal for at­tract­ing and keep­ing the bright­est minds and young tal­ents in the pro­fes­sion to be ad­dressed.

“Young teach­ers are es­sen­tial to the re­gen­er­a­tion of the pro­fes­sion it­self. With­out a new gen­er­a­tion of mo­ti­vat­ed teach­ers, mil­lions of learn­ers world­wide will miss out or con­tin­ue to miss out, on their right to a qual­i­ty ed­u­ca­tion. With teach­ers be­ing un­der­paid and un­der­val­ued, at­tract­ing and re­tain­ing tal­ent is a chal­lenge.”

Con­cerned that with large per­cent­ages of teach­ers like­ly to re­tire from prac­tice in the com­ing decade and not enough young can­di­dates com­ing in­to the pro­fes­sion to re­place the, the TTUTA pres­i­dent said the au­thor­i­ties need­ed to make sure there wasn’t a sud­den ex­o­dus of ex­pe­ri­enced teach­ers leav­ing the ser­vice due to burnout and frus­tra­tion.

If this were to oc­cur, Doo­d­hai said, “It could jeop­ar­dise the pro­fes­sion in that we end up with a crop of young and in­ex­pe­ri­enced teach­ers.”