Education Ministry employing teacher retention strategies for new academic year

The Ministry of Education and Youth will be employing various teacher retention strategies for the 2024/25 academic year, which begins in September.

Acting Chief Education Officer, Terry-Ann Thomas Gayle, advised that teachers are being sought from various countries.

“We currently have engaged Nigeria, Ghana, the Philippines and India. So, we are looking all over,” she said in response to a question posed during the Ministry’s Region Six 2024 Back to School Conference at The Jamaica Pegasus hotel in New Kingston on Monday.

The conference was held under the theme ‘Shaping the Future: STEM/STEAM and the Transformation Agenda’.

Last year, the Ministry gave school administrators approval to engage part-time, retired and pretrained graduate teachers and final-year student teachers to fill the gaps caused by teacher resignations.

Administrators were also encouraged to redeploy underutilised staff, merge small classes, use the block timetable approach and increase the use of information and communications technology (ICT) in the classroom.

“There are areas within that bulletin that will remain. But we’re giving you an additional pool from which you can select your teachers,” Thomas Gayle said.

She explained that school administrators will be able to use the Ministry’s job portal, https://jobs.moey.gov.jm/, to identify and recruit teachers who are being engaged from foreign countries.

- JIS News

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