The Teaching Service Commission asserts there is no shortage of qualified primary teachers, attributing vacancies in government-assisted schools to delayed board recommendations.
The Teach-ing Ser-vice Com-mis-sion (TSC) says there is no short-age of qual-i-fied teach-ers for gov-ern-ment and gov-ern-ment-as-sist-ed pri-ma-ry schools in Trinidad.. In a me-dia re-lease, the TSC said valid Pri-or-i-ty Lists cur-rent-ly ex-ist with more than 200 qual-i-fied can-di-dates for Teacher I (Pri-ma-ry) po-si-tions in gov-ern-ment schools, and more than 250 can-di-dates for sim-i-lar posts in gov-ern-ment-as-sist-ed pri-ma-ry schools.. Ac-cord-ing to the Com-mis-sion, all of the can-di-dates hold Bach-e-lor of Ed-u-ca-tion de-grees and suc-cess-ful-ly com-plet-ed
in-ter-views con-duct-ed by the Min-istry of Ed-u-ca-tion, mak-ing them el-i-gi-ble for ap-point-ment.. The TSC ex-plained that un-der the es-tab-lished ap-point-ment process for de-nom-i-na-tion-al schools, school boards are grant-ed ac-cess to the Pri-or-i-ty List and are re-spon-si-ble for se-lect-ing and rec-om-mend-ing can-di-dates to fill va-can-cies with-in their schools.. How-ev-er, the Com-mis-sion said many va-can-cies re-main un-filled be-cause the re-quired rec-om-men-da-tions have not been sub-mit-ted to the Min-istry of Ed-u-ca-tion for on-ward trans-mis-sion to the TSC.. The
Com-mis-sion al-so re-vealed that it has been work-ing with the Min-istry of Ed-u-ca-tion on an-oth-er re-cruit-ment and se-lec-tion ex-er-cise for Teacher I (Pri-ma-ry) po-si-tions in gov-ern-ment-as-sist-ed schools.. The ex-er-cise, which is near-ing com-ple-tion, in-volved in-ter-views with more than 400 can-di-dates and is ex-pect-ed to pro-duce an ad-di-tion-al pool of over 300 qual-i-fied teach-ers.. The TSC said its con-sti-tu-tion-al man-date to fill va-can-cies in de-nom-i-na-tion-al board schools de-pends on rec-om-men-da-tions be-ing sub-mit-ted by the boards.. “With-out
these rec-om-men-da-tions, ap-point-ments can-not be fi-nal-ized,” the Com-mis-sion said.. The TSC urged de-nom-i-na-tion-al boards and oth-er stake-hold-ers to work col-lab-o-ra-tive-ly with the Com-mis-sion to en-sure va-can-cies in gov-ern-ment-as-sist-ed pri-ma-ry schools are filled prompt-ly and ef-fi-cient-ly.. The Com-mis-sion said this col-lab-o-ra-tion would help safe-guard the ed-u-ca-tion-al in-ter-ests of chil-dren and en-sure the pri-ma-ry school cur-ricu-lum is de-liv-ered by trained pro-fes-sion-als.
primary school teachers, Teaching Service Commission, Trinidad education, teacher vacancies, government schools, school boards