The country’s largest teachers’ trade union is raising questions about government’s selection process for 240 school monitors who were dispatched across the primary school system last Wednesday.
Barbados Union of Teachers (BUT) President Pedro Shepherd accused the education ministry of snubbing numerous volunteers who offered their services at the height of the Coronavirus pandemic. And, while Shepherd is happy that the status of school monitors has been formalised, he criticised the absence of transparency in the process.
“I think that we needed the extra hands. We will wait and see… but i am not sure that the persons who were selected had to go through any particular screening or anything,” Shepherd told Barbados TODAY.
“We had volunteers at the school and we submitted the volunteers’ names too, but this is a political thing, so your volunteers were not chosen,” he added.
According to the longstanding union member, the monitors do not carry formal identification or an identifying shirt and it is still unclear to whom they ought to report.
“We don’t know who they are supposed to report to and what form they are supposed to report on. It appears [the ministry of education] just sent them. I am told by some of them that they are going to get shirts, but most of them are from the communities, so students I guess know some of them. On the first day it would have definitely been strange seeing five people in plain clothes with no identification,” Shepherd admitted.
Adding insult to injury is the fact that the new monitors have reportedly been installed for an entire year, potentially rendering futile, a process evaluation that is expected to occur at the end of the ongoing school term.
“The other thing about it is that I understand they have a one-year contract, so even if you want to meet at the end of the term, you already have people who have been given one-year contracts. The volunteers were working for 100 dollars a week and now you are giving these people 340 dollars a week, so that is another concern that other people would have. I don’t know if the BUT is very worried about that, but we would have preferred to have people who are known to the school and were volunteering in the early stages,” Shepherd argued.
The school monitors were first referenced by Dame Sandra Mason during last month’s Throne Speech and further explained by Minister of Education Santia Bradshaw. According to her, the monitors will assist with the enforcement of Covid-19 protocols and aid teaching staff with the general supervision of students on the compound.
“The monitors will also assist with giving directions at arrival and dismissal times so that we don’t have any congestion at the entrance and the exit to the school,” explained Chief Education Joy Adamson last week.
“They will be assisting at lunch time and helping teachers to maintain protocol so the latter can concentrate more on the classroom work and the teaching and learning process. They will also be patrolling and monitoring the corridors and restrooms and assisting on the playgrounds,” she added.
When contacted on Thursday afternoon, Adamson indicated that she was not in a position to discuss the vetting process for school monitors or the terms and conditions of their selection. Efforts to reach her again in the evening were unsuccessful.
Meanwhile, Shepherd suggested that the Government should at least add a measure of flexibility to the 8 a.m. to 4 p.m daily schedule for the monitors to account for students who arrive as early as 7 a.m.
“I am not sure that the whole school monitors thing has been thought through properly… But as I said, we needed the hands and the hands were given, so I am not going to quarrel about it, but I am hoping that at some point – maybe at the end of the terms, we can meet and review it.
“My particular belief is that Government should institute a formal before and after-school care programme utilising people who have an interest in teaching and education, even if you take students who are doing their Bachelor’s degree programme at Erdiston and have that as part of their internship, so that when they finish the programme, they would already have the training,” the union leader suggested.
(kareemsmith@barbadostoday.bb)
