…as Linden teachers continue third day of picketing

PARENTS of pupils attending the Ituni Nursery and Howell Wilson Primary Schools in the Region 10 community of Ituni, participated in a protest action in front of the schools’ premises before taking to the streets of the small community, voicing their frustration over the schools being closed since the beginning of the new school term on Monday.

The parents expressed disappointment that their children’s education is being held back as a result of strike action by the teachers. They are calling on the government to resolve the issue earliest, since they prefer the trained teachers instruct their children. The parents said that they will not be sending their children to school to be taught by trainee teachers, as substitutes, through the contingency plan of the Ministry of Education.

Beverly Julian said that the government should pay the teachers their due, since those in Ituni endure extra challenges to effectively deliver education to the children. “We need our trained teachers, we need justice for our teachers, our teachers work very hard, especially with the Grade Six children, over seven of them receive scholarships, we need justice for our teachers,” she said.

President of the Parent Teachers Association (PTA), Kenese Liverpool, shared similar sentiments in urging the government to remunerate the teachers satisfactorily, so they can continue to provide education for their children. “We are desperate people fighting for our children’s education and future and we need our trained teachers back. The same money they will use to pay the trainee teachers, let them use it to pay the increase,” she reasoned.

The parents threatened that if the situation is not resolved, they will continue to protest for the rest of the week.

At this year’s NGSA, the Howell Wilson Primary was able to secure five places at the Region 10 premier high school, Mackenzie High. The school’s top performer Tyler Dest scored 494 marks, a calculated percentage of 93.3. The other students are: Glen Naipaul scoring 488, Asha Jameer scoring 481, Brenela Culpepper scoring 479 and Desmond Duke scoring 468.
Unlike the children residing in Linden or even Kwakwani, Grade Six teacher Yvonne Nazier related that the Ituni students are not exposed to current affairs, due to the non-availability of television stations in the community; even newspapers are not readily available and so effectively delivering the Social Studies syllabus can be extra difficult, since the children are basically locked away in their own little domain. There is no Wi-Fi access and so with limited mobile data, research is very difficult. It is as teaching using the old traditional methods in a technological era, in which even the curriculum is revised to suit this era.

While many schools are equipped with computer laboratories and many communities in Region 10 have ICT hubs, Ituni students are tremendously disadvantaged in this regard and so Nazier, who is the lone Grade Six teacher at the school and who has been teaching for 30 odd years, had to work extra hard for the results achieved at this year’s NGSA.

Linden protest
Meanwhile, in Linden, hundreds of teachers participated in the third day of protest action on the streets of Mackenzie. They again were clad in white t-shirts and sang gospel songs as they marched, before assembling in front of the education ministry. Trainee teachers and volunteers were again dispatched to the various schools, but at most schools even fewer children attended, while some saw no children attending. Regional officials are however calling on parents to send their children to school, since they will be attended to.