–is against teachers supervising break periods

THE Guyana Teachers Union (GTU) has accused the Ministry of Education of being unreasonable by demanding that teachers now supervise students during the break periods, and has called for a complete retraction or a review of the new rule.

The issue was brought to the fore late last week, when the GTU met with members of the media and raised several issues of concern, including the lack of consultations on salary increases and the debunchment of payments.
GTU President, Mark Lyte said a recent memo signed by the Chief Education Officer (CEO), Marcel Crawford, advises that teachers supervise students during the break periods. What is even more outrageous, Lyte argued, is the demand for teachers to do so during lunch break, something that the GTU cannot support.
“Because this is now incorporated in the memo, schools are asking teachers to supervise students via a rotation system,” Lyte said, while adding that the new demand is in direct contravention of the International labour laws which states that all teachers and all workers in general are required to have breaks. The break can either be coffee, tea or lunch in particular, and are there to allow the teachers to recuperate from the mental and physical stress that they go through during class sessions.
“If this is taken away, we believe that it will have a serious impact on the mental state of our teachers,” he reasoned.

Having taken all of this into consideration, Lyte said the GTU is therefore calling for the CEO to completely retract the memo or amend it to exclude lunch breaks as part of the supervision requirement.

Alluding to an aspect of the memo which mentioned the amount of children one teacher should be allotted to overlook at any one time, Lyte pointed out that teachers are required to have at least 20 children under supervision, but he reminded that some teachers are burdened with sometimes close to 70 children. This, according to him, cannot be tolerated.