Education ministry to meet with acting principals on salary issue

The Ministry of Education will soon be meeting with acting primary school principals to discuss salaries.

In a statement on Friday, the ministry said that efforts to address the salary problem last month were unsuccessful.

“The Ministry of Education regretted to learn that the issue of the primary school principals not being paid up to their grade had occurred again. Last month, the Chief Education Officer met with the office that is responsible for the payment and, having left that meeting, was assured that the systems were tightened and put in place to ensure the full payment for the primary school principals this month,” the statement said. “So it is deeply regrettable that once again, the situation has occurred. The Chief Education Officer reiterated the importance that the office gets the system in line to avoid further occurrences of this. The Chief Education Officer has asked the office to meet early next week with the principals to give them the face-to-face assurance that this incident will be brought under control forthwith.”

On Thursday, several acting principals expressed frustration about not being paid to scale, at the Association of Public Primary School Principals’ (APPSP) second biennial conference.

President Ivan Clarke said he had “discussed the matter at length” with the education chief earlier this month and thought the issue had been rectified.

However, he said he was informed the acting principals were not being paid to scale because they had not been evaluated.

There are about 40 acting primary school principals and none of them has been paid to scale since the school year began last month. (SZB)