Director of Education, Dominique McCartney-Russell shared on Thursday that efforts by the education ministry to retain teachers is working.
She told ZNS News, “many teachers are now engaged in professional development, on demand professional development. In fact I think about seven or eight are going on a music professional development and so that has been a plus for us. There’s been an increase in salaries. Teachers have also been given a $250 classroom decor stipend so that they can, you know, outfit their classrooms at the beginning of the school year. We have also sought to create more efficient classrooms so that they are not bogged down in planning.”
The education director said more attention will be given to the mentorship of new teachers and administrators. “We’ve reestablished the teacher career path. So teachers who want to advance in their career but do not want to become school administrators are able to do so. And so we saw twenty four teachers become senior teachers and they are also supporting out mentoring initiative and they’ve already met with the teachers,” she said.
These implemented measures have helped to curb the amount of teacher resignations. It was earlier reported that some forty teacher had permanently left the classroom in the academic year. According to McCartney-Russell some teacher of reconsidered leaving. She said, “I haven’t seen any resignations of late, up to this point anyway. I have seen a few persons who have desired to return and we’re working on those.”
The ministry of education is expected to launch a campaign to attract more persons to the teaching profession in the next semester.
